THE  LIBRARY 

OF 
THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 
LOS  ANGELES 


'-  •*'• 


THE  MAN  WHO  DID 
THE  RIGHT  THING 


OF  CALIF.  LIBRARY.  LOS  AHGBLBS 


NOVELS  BY  THE  SAME 
AUTHOR 

THE  GAY-DOMBEYS 

MRS.  WARREN'S  DAUGHTER 


THE  MAN  WHO  DID 
THE  RIGHT  THING 

A  ROMANCE 


BY 

SIR  HARRY  JOHNSTON 


jfteto  gork 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1921 

A.U  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,  1921, 
BY  THE   MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


Set  up  and  electrotypcd.     Published  April,  igat. 


THE  central  idea  of  this  book  came  into  my  mind 
a  great  many  years  ago,  out  in  Africa,  and  was 
based  to  some  extent  on  what  actually  happened  at 
Unguja  and  elsewhere.  Yet,  though  there  is  more 
realism  than  might  be  supposed  in  my  descriptions  and 
incidents  and  the  imagined  personalities  that  appear 
in  these  pages,  I  have  endeavoured  so  to  disturb  and 
re-present  the  facets  of  my  truths  that  they  shall  not 
wound  the  feelings  of  any  one  living  or  of  the  surviv- 
ing friends  and  relations  of  the  good  and  bad  people 
I  have  known  in  East  Africa,  or  of  those  in  my  own 
land  who  were  entangled  in  East  African  affairs. 

But  although  I  have  pondered  long  over  telling  such 
a  story,  this  Romance  of  East  Africa  was  mainly  pro- 
jected, created  and  put  down  on  paper  when  my  wife 
and  I  stayed  in  the  summer-autumn  of  last  year  at 
the  Swiss  home,  in  the  mountains,  of  a  dear  friend. 
There  we  amused  ourselves,  as  we  swung  in  hammocks 
slung  under  pine-trees  and  gazed  over  the  panorama 
of  the  Southern  Alps,  by  arguing  and  discussing  as  to 
what  the  creations  of  my  imagination  would  say  to  one 
another,  how  they  would  act  under  given  circumstances 
within  the  four  corners  ruled  by  Common  Sense  and 
Probability:  two  guides  who  will,  I  hope,  always  guard 
my  faltering  steps  in  fiction-writing. 

Therefore,  though  dedications  have  lost  their  novelty 
and  freshness,  and  are  now  incitements  to  preciosity 
or  payments  in  verbiage,  I,  to  satisfy  my  own  senti- 
ments of  gratitude  for  a  most  delightful  holiday  of 
rest  and  refreshment,  dedicate  this  Romance  to  my 
hostess  of  the  Chalet  Soleil,  who  founded  this  new 
Abbaye  de  Theleme  for  the  recuperation  of  tired  minds 
and  bodies,  and  enforced  within  its  walls  and  walks 
and  woods  but  one  precept : 

FAY  CE  QUE  VOULDRAS. 

H.  H.  JOHNSTON. 

POLING, 

March,  1921. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I    THE  BAINESES i 

II    JOHN  AND  LUCY 16 

III  SIBYL  AT  SILCHESTER 33 

IV  LUCY   HESITATES 45 

V    ROGER'S  DISMISSAL 57 

VI     THE  VOYAGE  OUT 65 

VII    UNGUJA — AND  UP-COUNTRY 89 

VIII  LETTERS  To  AND  FRO   .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .113 

IX    MISSION  LIFE 128 

X    ROGER  ARRIVES .     ,     .     .   151 

XI     THE  HAPPY  VALLEY 176 

XII     THE  ATTACK  ON  THE  STATION 199 

XIII  THE  RETURN  TO  UNGUJA 210 

XIV  LUCY'S  SECOND  MARRIAGE 231 

XV    IN  ENGLAND 244 

XVI     SIBYL  AS  SIREN 265 

XVII     BACK  TO  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY 294 

XVIII     FIVE  YEARS  LATER 311 

XIX    TROUBLE  WITH  STOLZENBERG 331 

XX    THE  BOER  WAR        355 

XXI  THE  MORALS  OF  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY    .     .     .  367 

XXII     EIGHT  YEARS  HAVE  PASSED  BY 386 

XXIII  THE  END  OF  SIBYL 407 

XXIV  ALL  ENDS  IN  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY    ....  431 


THE  MAN  WHO  DID 
THE  RIGHT  THING 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  BAINESES 

IT  was  in  the  last  week  of  June,  1886,  and  there 
really  were  warm  and  early  summers  in  the  nine- 
teenth century. 

The  little  chapel  had  been  so  close  and  hot  during 
the  morning  service  that  in  spite  of  the  interest  Lucy 
Josling  felt  in  the  occasion  —  it  was  the  first  appearance 
of  her  betrothed,  John  Baines,  as  a  preacher  in  his 
native  place,  and  the  delivery  of  his  farewell  sermon 
before  starting  for  Africa  —  she  could  not  repress  a  sigh 
of  relief  as  she  detached  herself  from  the  perspiring 
throng  of  worshippers  and  stood  for  a  few  moments  in 
the  bright  sunlight,  inhaling  the  perfume  of  distant 
hayfields. 

"  You  look  a  trifle  pale,  Lucy,"  said  Mr.  Baines, 
senior,  a  stumpy  red-faced  man  with  light  sandy  hair 
and  a  long  upper  lip.  "  It's  precious  warm.  I  s'pose 
you'n  John'll  want  to  walk  back  together?  Well, 
don't  keep  dinner  waiting,  'cos  that  always  puts  me 
out.  Now  then,  Sarah,  come  along:  it's  too  hot  to 
stand  gossiping  about.  Let's  get  home  as  quick  as 
we  can." 

Mrs.  Baines,  a  gaunt,  thin  woman  with  a  long 
parchment-coloured  face  and  cold  grey  eyes,  looked 
indignantly  at  her  husband  when  he  talked  of  gossiping, 
but  said  nothing,  took  his  arm  and  walked  away. 

Lucy  put  up  her  parasol  and  leant  against  the  ugly 


2        THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

iron  railings  which  interposed  between  the  dusty  chapel 
windows  and  the  pavement.  The  congregation  had 
not  all  dispersed.  Two  or  three  awkward-looking 
young  men  were  standing  in  a  group  in  the  roadway, 
and,  while  pretending  to  carry  on  a  jesting  conversation 
amongst  themselves,  were  casting  sheepish  looks  at 
Lucy,  who  was  deemed  a  beauty  for  ten  miles  round. 
They  evidently  alluded  to  her  in  the  witticisms  they 
exchanged,  so  that  she  had  to  restrict  her  angle  of 
vision  in  case  her  eyes  met  theirs  when  she  wished  to 
ignore  their  offensive  existence.  Mrs.  Garrett,  the 
grocer's  wife,  who  had  been  inquiring  from  Miss  Si- 
mons, the  little  lame  dressmaker  —  why  were  village 
dressmakers  of  that  period,  in  life  and  in  fiction,  nearly 
always  lame  ?  —  how  her  married  sister  progressed 
after  a  confinement,  walked  up  to  Lucy  and  said : 

"  Well,  Miss  Josling,  and  how  d'you  like  the  idea  of 
parting  with  your  young  man?  Ain't  cher  afraid  of 
his  goin'  off  so  far,  and  all  among  savages  and  wild 
beasts  too,  same  as  'e  was  tellin'  on?  It's  all  right 
and  proper  as  how  he  should  carry  the  news  of  the 
Gospel  to  them  pore  naked  blacks,  but  as  I  says  to 
Garrett,  I  says,  '  'E  don't  ought  to  go  and  engage 
'isself  before'and  to  a  girl  as  'e  mayn't  never  come  back 
to  marry,  and  as  '11  spend  the  best  years  of  'er  life 
a-waitin*  an'  a-waitin'  and  cryin'  'er  eyes  out  to  no 
use.'  However,  't  ain't  any  business  of  mine,  an'  I 
s'pose  you've  set  your  heart  upon  'im  now,  and  won't 
thank  me  for  bein'  so  outspoken.  .  .  .  ? 

"  I'm  sure  Vs  come  back  from  London  quite  the 
gentleman;  and  lor'!  'Ow  proud  'is  mother  did  look 
while  'e  was  a-preachin'.  An'  'e  can  preach,  too !  'Alf 
the  words  'e  used  was  Greek  to  me.  .  .  .  S'pose  they 
was  Greek,  if  it  comes  to  that  " —  she  laughed  fatly  — 
'  Though  why  th'  Almighty  should  like  Greek  and 
Latin  better'n  plain  English,  or  even  'Ebrew,  is  what 
I  never  could  understand. 


THE  BAINESES  3 

"  And  to  think  as  I  remember  'im,  as  it  on'y  seems 
the  other  day,  comin'  in  on  the  sly  to  buy  a  'aporth  of 
sugar-candy  at  our  shop.  'Is  mother  never  liked  'is 
eatin'  between  meals  an'  'e  always  'ad  to  keep  'is  bit 
o'  candy  'idden  away  in  'is  pocket  till  'e  was  out  of  'er 
sight.  ...  I'm  sure  for  my  part  I  wonder  'ow  she 
can  bring  'erself  to  part  with  'im,  'e  bein'  'er  on'y  son, 
and  she  so  fond  of  'im  too.  But  then  she  always  set 
'er  'eart  on  'is  bein'  a  gentleman,  and  give  'im  a  good 
eddication.  .  .  .  'Ow's  father  and  mother?  .  .  ." 

"  Oh  quite  well,  thank  you,"  replied  Lucy,  wonder- 
ing why  John  was  stopping  so  long  and  exposing  her  to 
this  tiresome  garrulity  and  the  hatefulness  of  having 
her  private  affairs  discussed  in  a  loud  tone  for  the 
benefit  of  the  Sunday  strollers  of  Tilehurst.  "  They 
would  have  come  over  from  Aldermaston  to  hear  John 
preach,  but  father  cannot  bear  to  take  his  eyes  off  the 
hay  till  it's  all  carried,  and  mother's  alone  now  because 
my  sisters  are  away.  ...  I  just  came  by  myself  to 
the  Baineses'  for  the  day.  .  .  . 

"  And,  Mrs.  Garrett,"  continued  Lucy,  a  slight  flush 
rising  to  her  cheek,  "  I  don't  think  you  quite  understand 
about  my  engagement  to  John  Baines.  I  —  I  —  am 
not  at  all  to  be  pitied.  You  rather  ought  to  congratu- 
late me.  First,  because  I  am  very  —  er  —  fond  of  him 
and  proud  of  his  dedicating  his  life  to  such  a  work, 
and,  secondly,  because  there  is  no  question  of  my  wait- 
ing years  and  years  before  I  get  married.  John  goes 
out  this  month  and  I  shall  follow  six  or  seven  months 
afterwards  —  just  to  give  him  time  to  get  our  home 
ready.  We  shall  be  married  out  there,  at  a  place  called 
Unguja,  where  there  is  a  Consulate.  .  .  ." 

Lucy  stopped  short.  She  was  going  on  to  give  other 
good  reasons  for  her  engagement  when  a  slight  feeling 
of  pride  forbade  her  further  to  excuse  herself  to  Mrs. 
Garrett  —  a  grocer's  wife!  And  she  herself  a  Na- 
tional school-teacher!  There  could  be  no  community 


4        THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

between  them.  She  therefore  fell  silent  and  gazed 
away  from  Mrs.  Garrett's  red  face  and  blue  bonnet 
across  the  white  sandy  road  blazing  with  midday  sun- 
shine to  the  house  fronts  of  the  opposite  side,  with  their 
small  shops  closed,  the  blinds  drawn  down  and  every- 
thing denoting  the  respectable  lifelessness  of  the  Sab- 
bath. ...  At  this  awkward  pause  John  Baines  is- 
sued from  the  vestry  door  of  the  chapel,  Mrs.  Garrett 
nodded  good-naturedly,  and  went  her  way. 

John  was  about  f our-and-twenty  —  Lucy's  age.  He 
was  a  little  over  the  average  height  but  ungainly,  with 
rather  sloping  shoulders,  long  arms,  large  hands  and 
feet;  a  face  with  not  well-formed  features;  nose 
coarse,  fleshy,  blunt-tipped;  mouth  wide,  with  his 
father's  long  upper  lip,  on  which  were  the  beginnings  of 
a  flaxen  moustache,  with  tame  ends  curling  down  to 
meet  the  upward  growth  of  the  young  beard.  He  had 
an  under  lip  that  was  merely  a  band  of  pink  skin  round 
the  mouth,  without  an  inward  curve  to  break  its  union 
with  the  broad  chin.  His  teeth  were  strong  and  white 
but  irregular  in  setting,  the  canines  being  thrust  out 
of  position.  His  eyes  were  blue-grey,  and  not  without 
a  pleasant  twinkle.  The  hair  was  too  long  for  tidiness, 
not  long  enough  for  eccentric  saintliness.  It  was  a 
yellow  brown  and  was  continued  down  the  cheeks  in 
a  silken  beard  from  ear  to  ear,  the  tangled,  undipped, 
uncared-for  beard  of  a  young  man  who  has  never 
shaved.  His  fresh  pink-and-white  complexion  was 
marred  here  and  there  with  the  pimples  and  blotches 
of  adolescence.  Lucy,  however,  thought  him  good  to 
look  at ;  he  only  wanted  a  little  smartening  up,  which 
she  promised  herself  to  impart  to  him  when  they  were 
married.  He  looked  what  he  was :  a  good-hearted, 
simple-minded,  unintellectual  Englishman,  an  Anglo- 
Saxon,  with  a  hearty  appetite  for  plain  food,  a  love  of 
cricket,  who  would  with  little  difficulty  remain  in  all 
things  chaste  and  sober;  slow  to  wrath,  but,  if  really 


THE  BAINESES  5 

pushed  against  the  wall,  able  to  show  berserker  rage. 

Having  taken  up  a  religious  career  he  had  acquired 
a  certain  pomposity  of  manner  which  sat  ill  on  his 
boyishness ;  he  had  to  remember  in  intervals  of  games 
or  country  dances  or  flirtations  that  he  had  been  set 
apart  for  the  Lord's  work.  But  he  would  make  an 
excellent  husband.  His  class  has  furnished  quite  the 
best  type  of  colonist  abroad. 

John  gave  his  arm  silently  to  Lucy,  who  took  it  with 
a  gesture  of  affection,  and  patted  it  once  or  twice  with 
her  kid-gloved  hand,  which  lover-like  demonstrations 
John  accepted  rather  solemnly.  As  they  walked  up 
the  sunny  main  street  there  was  little  conversation 
between  them,  but  when  they  turned  down  an  old 
shady  road  running  between  red  brick  walls  overgrown 
with  ivy  and  Oxford  weed,  behind  which  rose  the  spire 
of  St.  Michael's  and  the  tall  trees  of  its  churchyard, 
their  good  behaviour  relaxed  and  John  looking  down, 
and  seeing  Lucy's  fresh,  pretty  face  looking  up,  and 
observing  in  a  hasty  glance  around  that  nobody  was 
in  sight,  bent  down  and  kissed  her :  after  which  he 
looked  rather  silly  and  hurried  on  with  great  strides. 

"  Don't  walk  so  fast,  John  dear ;  you  quite  drag  me 
along.  We  need  not  be  in  such  a  hurry.  Tell  me, 
how  did  you  spend  your  last  days  in  London?  " 

"  Why,  Wednesday  I  went  to  the  outfitters  to  super- 
intend the  packing  of  my  boxes;  Thursday  I  bid 
good-bye  to  all  my  friends  at  the  Bayswater  College. 
In  the  evening  there  was  a  valedictory  service  at  the 
Edgware  Road  Chapel,  when  Thomas,  Bayley,  Ander- 
son and  I  were  designated  for  the  East  African  Mission. 
The  next  day,  Friday,  I  went  in  the  morning  to  see  my 
boxes  put  safely  on  board  the  Godavery  lying  in  the 
Albert  Docks ;  and  I  also  chose  my  berth  —  I  share  a 
cabin  with  Anderson.  Then  in  the  afternoon  there  was 
a  big  public  meeting  at  Plymouth  Hall.  Sir  Powell 
Buckley  was  chairman,  and  Brentham,  the  African 


6       THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

explorer,  spoke,  as  well  as  a  lot  of  others,  and  it  ended 
with  prayers  and  hymns.  The  Reverend  Paul  Barker, 
a  very  old  African  missionary,  who  was  the  first  to 
enter  Abeokuta,  delivered  the  Blessing.  Every  one 
shook  hands  with  us  and  bade  us  Godspeed. 

"  After  this  the  three  brethren  designated  for  the 
Mission,  and  myself,  of  course,  together  with  Brent- 
ham  the  explorer,  Mr.  Barker  and  a  few  others  from 
the  platform,  adjourned  to  Sir  Powell  Buckley's,  where 
we  had  tea.  Here  we  four  new  missionaries  were 
introduced  to  old  Mrs.  Doland,  that  lady  who,  under 
God,  has  so  liberally  contributed  to  the  support  of  the 
East  African  Mission.  .  .  .  And  also  to  Captain 
Brentham,  who  has  just  returned  from  the  East 
coast.  .  .  . 

"  I  confess  I  didn't  like  him  .  .  .  altogether.  .  .  . 
In  fact,  I  can't  quite  make  out  why  he  came  and  spoke 
at  the  meeting,  for  I  could  see  at  once  by  the  way  he 
stared  about  him  during  the  hymns  he  was  not  one  of 
us  ...  in  heart.  In  his  speech  at  Plymouth  Hall  he 
chiefly  laid  stress  on  the  advantages  gained  by  civiliza- 
tion when  a  country  was  opened  up  by  missionaries, 
how  we  taught  the  people  trades,  and  so  on.  There 
was  no  allusion  to  the  inestimable  boon  to  the  natives 
in  making  known  the  Blessed  Gospel  and  the  promises 
in  the  Old  Testament.  .  .  . 

"  In  fact  —  am  I  walking  too  fast?  But  father  will 
be  angry  if  we  are  late  for  dinner  —  in  fact,  I  thought 
Brentham  inclined  to  sneer  at  us.  They  say  he  wants 
a  Government  appointment  and  is  making  up  to  Sir 
Powell  Buckley 

"  Then  Saturday  —  yesterday  —  I  came  down  here 
—  and  —  er  —  well !  here  we  are !  Are  you  listen- 
ing?" 

Lucy  gave  John's  arm  an  affectionate  squeeze  by 
way  of  assurance,  but  on  this  rare  June  day  there  was 
something  in  the  still,  hot  air,  thick  with  hay-scent, 


THE  BAINESES  7 

which  lulled  her  sensibilities  and  caused  her  to  forget 
to  be  concerned  at  her  betrothed's  departure.  She 
had  temporarily  forgotten  many  little  things  stored  up 
to  be  said  to  him,  and  was  vexed  at  her  own  taciturnity. 
However,  their  walk  had  come  to  an  end,  and  they  stood 
in  front  of  John's  home. 

Mr.  John  Parker  Baines,  the  father  of  the  mission- 
ary-designate, was  a  manufacturer  of  aerated  drinks 
and  cider,  whose  premises  lay  on  the  western  side  of 
Tilehurst  and  marred  the  beauty  of  the  countryside  and 
the  straggling  village  with  a  patch  of  uncompromising 
vulgarity  and  garishness.  The  manufactory  itself 
was  in  a  simple  style  of  architecture:  a  rectangular 
building  of  red  brick,  with  two  tall  smoke-blackened 
chimneys  and  a  number  of  smaller  ones.  "  John 
Baines  and  Co.,  Manufacturers  of  Aerated  Drinks," 
was  painted  in  large  letters  across  the  brick  front. 

A  Sabbath  stillness  prevailed,  intensified  by  the 
smokeless  chimneys  and  the  closed  door.  Only  a  cur 
lay  in  the  sun,  and  some  dirty  ducks  squittered  the 
water  in  a  dirty  ditch  which  carried  off  the  drainage 
of  the  factory  to  a  neighbouring  brook. 

A  short  distance  apart  from  the  main  building  stood 
the  dwelling  of  the  proprietor,  Mr.  Baines,  who  had 
inherited  the  business  from  his  wife's  father  and  trans- 
ferred it  to  his  own  name.  This  home  of  the  Baines 
family,  though  designed  by  the  same  architect,  had  its 
aboriginal  ugliness  modified  by  numerous  superficial 
improvements.  A  rich  mantle  of  ivy  overgrew  a 
portion  of  its  red  brick  walls  and  wreathed  its  ugly 
stucco  portico.  The  window-panes  were  brightly  pol- 
ished and  gave  a  vivacity  to  the  house  by  their  gleaming 
reflections  of  light  and  shade.  You  could  see  through 
them  the  green  Venetian  blinds  of  the  sitting-rooms 
and  the  unpolished  backs  of  looking-glasses  and  clean 
white  muslin  curtains  of  the  bedrooms.  In  the  short 
strip  of  front  garden  there  were  beds  of  scarlet  gera- 


8        T.HE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

niums  which  added  a  pleasant  note  of  bright  colour. 

At  the  grained  front  door  a  cat  was  waiting  to  be  let 
in  with  an  air"  about  her  as  if  she  too  had  returned  a 
little  late  from  church  or  chapel.  A  strong,  rich  odour 
of  roast  beef  filled  the  air  and  drowned  the  scent  of 
hayfields.  This  intensified  the  feeling  of  vulgar  com- 
fort which  permeated  the  house  when  the  door  was 
opened  by  Mr.  Baines,  senior,  and  increased  the  pious 
satisfaction  of  the  cat,  who  arched  her  black  body  and 
rubbed  herself  coyly  against  her  master's  Sunday  trou- 
sers. 

"  Of  course,  you're  late,"  snapped  Mr.  Baines.  "  I 
knew  you  would  be.  Here's  mother,  as  cross  as  two 
sticks." 

Mrs.  Baines,  who  had  stalked  into  the  narrow  hall 
from  the  dining-room,  gave  them  no  greeting,  but 
merely  called  to  Eliza  to  serve  the  dinner,  as  Mr.  John 
and  Miss  Josling  had  arrived. 

For  Lucy  this  was  not  a  pleasant  meal.  Mrs.  Baines 
was  one  of  those  unsympathetic  persons  that  took  away 
her  appetite.  She  was  a  thoroughly  good  woman  in 
the  estimation  of  her  neighbours,  austerely  devout, 
rigidly  honest,  an  able  housewife  and  a  strict  mother. 
But  her  future  daughter-in-law  had  long  since  classed 
her  as  thoroughly  unlovable.  The  one  tender  feeling 
she  evinced  was  her  passionate  though  undemonstrative 
devotion  to  her  only  son.  Even  this,  though  it  might 
beautify  her  dull  being  in  the  eyes  of  an  unconcerned 
observer,  did  not  always  announce  itself  pleasantly  to 
her  home  circle.  To  John  it  had  often  been  the  reason 
for  a  cruel  smacking  when  a  child  and  guilty  of  some 
small  childish  sin;  to  her  husband  it  was  the  excuse 
for  vexatious  economies,  which  while  they  did  not 
materially  increase  the  funds  devoted  to  his  son's 
education,  had  frequently  interfered  with  his  personal 
comfort. 

Mrs.  Baines's  love  of  John  was  further  manifested 


THE  BAINESES  9 

to  Lucy  by  a  jealous  criticism  of  her  speech  and  actions ; 
for,  like  most  mothers  of  an  only  son,  she  was  bound  to 
resent  the  bestowal  of  his  affections  on  a  sweetheart, 
and  determined  to  be  dissatisfied  with  whomever  he 
might,  select  for  that  honourable  position. 

So,  although  Lucy  was  pretty,  relatively  well-edu- 
cated, earning  her  living  already  as  a  National  school- 
mistress, the  daughter  of  a  much-respected  farmer,  and 
known  by  the  Baines  family  almost  since  she  was  a 
baby,  Mrs.  Baines  found  fault  with  her  just  because 
she  had  found  favour  with  John.  Lucy  was 
"  Church  "  and  they  were  "  Chapel."  She  was  vain 
and  worldly  and  quite  unsuited  to  be  the  wife  of  a  mis- 
sionary. The  fascination  of  worldliness  was  not  de- 
nied. The  Devil  knew  how  to  bait  his  traps. 
Through  worldly  influence  one  was  led  to  read  novels 
on  the  Sabbath,  to  dispute  the  Biblical  account  of  the 
Creation. 

Lucy,  it  is  true,  had  neither  scoffed  at  Genesis,  nor 
spoken  flippantly  of  Noah's  Ark,  nor  been  seen  reading 
fiction  on  a  Sunday;  but  that  didn't  matter.  With 
her  pretensions  to  an  interest  in  botany,  her  talk  about 
astronomy  and  the  distances  of  the  fixed  stars  and 
such  like  rubbish,  she  was  quite  capable  of  sliding  into 
infidelity.  And  as  to  her  observance  of  the  Sabbath, 
it  was  simply  disgraceful.  Of  course,  her  father  was 
to  blame  in  setting  her  a  bad  example  and  her  mother, 
too,  poor  soul,  was  much  too  easy-going  with  her 
daughters.  But  then,  when  you  came  to  consider 
that  Lucy  had  been  so  much  with  John,  to  say  nothing 
of  the  example  set  by  John's  parents,  you  would  have 
thought  she  might  have  learnt  by  this  time  how  the 
Lord's  Day  should  be  passed. 

It  was  this  last  point  which  strained  the  relations 
between  Mrs.  Baines  and  Lucy  on  this  particular 
Sunday.  Lucy  had  asked  John  to  take  her  for  a  walk 
in  the  afternoon.  It  would  be  their  last  opportunity 


io      THE  MAX  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

for  a  quiet  talk  all  to  themselves  before  his  departure. 
Although  John  Baines  had  inherited  his  mother's 
Sabbatarian  scruples  he  consented  to  Lucy's  proposal, 
partly  because  he  was  in  love  with  her,  partly  because 
his  residence  in  London  had  insensibly  broadened  his 
views.  For  once  his  mother's  influence  was  powerless 
to  alter  his  decision,  and  so  she  had  refrained  from 
further  argument.  But  this  first  check  to  her 
domination  over  her  son  had  considerably  soured  her 
feelings. 

Moreover,  Mrs.  Baines  honestly  believed,  according 
to  her  lights  —  for  like  all  the  millions  of  her  class  and 
period  she  knew  absolutely  nothing  about  astronomy, 
geology,  ethnology  and  history — that  the  Creator  of 
the  Universe  preferred  you  should  spend  the  Sunday 
afternoon  in  a  small,  stuffy  back  parlour  with  the 
blinds  half  down,  reading  the  Bible  or  Baxter's  sermons 
(or,  if  the  spiritual  appetite  were  very  weak,  an  illus- 
trated edition  of  Pilgrim's  Progress)  and  continue  this 
mortification  of  flesh  and  spirit  until  tea  time  (unless 
you  taught  in  the  Sunday-school).  You  should  then 
wind  up  the  Day  of  Rest  with  evening  chapel,  supper, 
more  sermon-reading,  and  bed. 

The  only  person  disposed  to  be  talkative  during  the 
meal  was  John  Baines  the  younger.  His  mother,  at 
all  times  glum,  was  more  than  ever  inclined  to  silence. 
Lucy  was  oppressed  by  her  frigid  demeanour  and 
vouchsafed  very  few  remarks,  other  than  those  called 
for  by  politeness.  As  to  Baines,  senior,  he  was  one  of 
those  short-necked,  fleshy  men  who  are  born  guzzlers, 
and  his  attention  was  too  much  concentrated  on  his  food 
to  permit  of  his  joining  in  conversation  during  his 
Sunday  dinner.  As  a  set-off  against  abstention  from 
alcohol  he  was  inordinately  greedy,  and  his  large  appe- 
tite was  a  constant  source  of  suffering  to  him,  for  his 
wife  took  a  grim  delight  in  mortifying  it.  Only  on 
Sundays  was  he  allowed  to  eat  his  fill  without  her 


THE  BAINESES  n 

interference.  Mrs.  Baines  always  did  the  carving  and 
helped  everything,  even  the  vegetables,  which  were 
placed  in  front  of  her,  flanking  the  joint.  The  maid- 
of-all-work,  Eliza,  waited  at  table  and  was  evidently 
the  slave  of  her  mistress's  eye.  The  family  dinner  on 
Sundays  was  almost  invariable  in  its  main  features, 
as  far  as  circumstances  permitted.  A  well-roasted 
round  of  beef,  with  baked  potatoes  and  Yorkshire 
pudding,  was  succeeded  by  an  apple  or  a  treacle  pud- 
ding, and  a  dessert  of  some  fruit  or  nuts  in  season. 
Of  one  thing  there  was  no  lack  and  abundant  variety  — 
effervescing,  non-alcoholic  drinks  :  Ginger  Beer,  Ginger 
Ale,  Gingerade ;  Lemonade,  Citronade,  Orangeade ; 
Phosphozone,  Hedozone,  Pyrodone,  Sparkling  Cider 
and  Perry  Champagne :  all  the  beverages  compounded 
of  carbonic  acid,  tartaric  acid,  citric  acid,  sugar,  water, 
apple  and  pear  juice,  and  flavouring  essences. 

The  Apple  champagne  that  John  gallantly  poured 
into  Lucy's  glass  did  not  lighten  her  spirits  or  loosen 
her  tongue.  What  could  she  find  to  say  to  that  guz- 
zling father  whose  face  and  hands  were  always  close  to 
his  plate,  except  during  the  brief  intervals  between  the 
courses  when  he  threw  himself  back  in  his  chair,  blew 
his  nose,  wiped  his  greasy  lips,  and  passed  his  fat  fore- 
finger round  the  corners  of  his  gums  to  remove  the 
wedges  of  food  which  had  escaped  deglutition?  Or 
to  the  gloomy  mother  who  ate  her  victuals  with  a 
sullen  champing,  and,  beyond  a  few  directions  to  the 
submissive  servant,  made  no  attempts  to  sustain  con- 
versation, only  according  to  the  garrulous  descriptions 

of  her  son  an  occasional  snappish  "  Oh !  indeed ," 

"Pretty  doings,  /  can  see ,"   "Little   good  can 

come   of   that ,"   and   so   on?     At   length,    when 

John's  experiences  in  London  had  come  to  an  end  and 
the  two  dishes  of  cherries  had  replaced  the  treacle  pud- 
ding, whilst  the  servant  handed  round  in  tumblers  our 
own  superlative  Sparkling  Cider,  Lucy  cleared  her 


12      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

throat  and  said,  "  I  suppose  John  will  be  leaving  you 
very  early  to-morrow  morning  ?  " 

"  Eh  ?  "  returned  Mrs.  Baines,  fixing  her  cold  grey 
eyes  on  Lucy.  She  had  heard  perfectly  well,  but  she 
thought  it  more  consistent  with  dignity  not  to  lend 
too  ready  an  ear  to  the  girl's  remarks.  Lucy  repeated 
more  distinctly  her  question. 

'  You  had  better  ask  him  all  about  it,"  replied 
John's  mother.  "  I  have  other  things  to  think  about 
on  the  Lord's  Day  besides  railway  time-tables." 

"Why?  Are  you  coming  to  see  me  off,  Lucy?" 
asked  John. 

"Well,  yes;  that  is,  if  Mrs.  Baines  doesn't  mind." 

"7  mind?"  exclaimed  the  angry  woman  in  a  stri- 
dent voice.  "  What  have  7  got  to  do  with  it ;  I  suppose 
railway  stations  are  free  to  every  one?  " 

'Yes,"  said  Lucy,  with  an  ache  at  the  back  of  her 
throat  and  almost  inclined  then  and  there  to  break  off 
her  engagement.  "  But  I  thought  you  might  like  to 
have  John  all  to  yourself  at  the  last.  However,  if  you 
have  no  objection,  I  should  much  like  to  see  him  off, 
poor  old  fellow  " —  and  Lucy  gave  his  big-knuckled 
hand  an  affectionate  pat  — "  I  think  I  can  manage  it. 
Father  has  to  come  into  Theale.  He  will  drop  me  at 
the  station  and  pick  me  up  again,  and  school  doesn't 
begin  till  nine.  What  time  does  your  train  go,  John  ?  " 

"  Twenty-five  past  seven.  I  shall  get  to  London 
soon  after  nine.  After  going  to  the  head-quarters  of 
the  Mission  and  getting  my  final  instructions  I  shall 
drive  straight  down  to  the  docks  and  go  on  board  the 
Godavery.  .  .  .  The  first  place  we  stop  at  is  Algiers, 
then  Malta,  then  the  Suez  Canal  and  Aden.  I  expect 
this  is  just  what  you'll  have  to  do,  Lucy,  when  you 
come  out  next  spring." 

Lucy  smiled  brightly.  She  had  gradually  grown 
into  her  engagement  as  she  grew  from  girlhood  to 
womanhood,  constrained  by  John's  bland  assumption 


THE  BAINESES  13 

that  the  damsel  he  selected  was  bound  to  be  his  wife. 
But  perhaps  her  main  inducement  was  his  fixed  deter- 
mination to  become  a  missionary  and  her  intense 
longing  to  see  "  foreign  parts,"  the  wonderful  and  the 
interesting  world.  She  was  just  rallying  her  spirits  to 
make  some  animated  reply  about  Algiers  when  Mrs. 
Baines  intervened  and  said  there  were  limits  to  all 
things,  and  if  they  didn't  wish  to  pass  the  whole  of  the 
Lord's  Day  eating,  drinking,  and  talking  they  had 
better  rise  and  let  Eliza  clear  away.  On  hearing  these 
words,  Mr.  Baines  turned  the  last  cherries  into  his 
plate  and  hastily  biting  them  off  and  ejecting  the  stones, 
pushed  his  chair  back  with  a  sigh.  Then,  rising 
heavily,  he  stumbled  into  the  armchair  near  the  fire- 
place and  composed  himself  for  a  nap.  The  maid  be- 
gan to  clear  away,  longing  to  get  back  to  her  Sunday 
dinner  and  concealed  novelette.  Lucy  went  to  put  on 
her  hat ;  John  yawned  and  drummed  his  fingers  on  the 
window-pane;  and  Mrs.  Baines  seated  herself  stiffly  in 
the  armchair  opposite  her  satiated  husband,  with  a 
large  brown  Bible  on  her  lap  and  two  or  three  leaflets 
covered  with  small-print  references  to  Scripture. 

When  John  heard  Lucy  tripping  downstairs  he  went 
to  meet  her,  feeling  instinctively  that  her  re-appearance 
in  the  dining-room  would  draw  some  bitter  comment 
from  his  mother.  He  put  on  his  felt  wide-awake,  took 
a  stout  stick,  and  soon  banged  the  front  door  on  his 
sweetheart  and  himself  in  a  way  which  sent  a  shiver 
through  the  frame  of  Mrs.  Baines,  who  with  an  impa- 
tient sigh  of  disgust  applied  herself  to  a  gloomy  portion 
of  the  Old  Testament. 

Probably  had  John  remained  to  keep  her  company 
she  would  have  made  no  attempt  to  entertain  him; 
but  she  would  have  applied  herself  with  real  interest 
to  Scriptural  exegesis.  Of  her  class  and  of  her  time 
what  little  romance  and  intellectuality  she  had  was 
put  into  Bible  study.  She  believed  the  British- 


14      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

degenerate  though  they  might  appear  as  to  Sabbath 
observance  —  were  descended  from  the  Ten  Lost 
Tribes,  who  had  been  led  by  the  prophet  Jeremiah  to 
Ireland  in  an  unnecessary  spurt  of  energy  and  had 
then  returned  in  coracles  to  the  more  favoured  Britain, 
Jeremiah  —  age  being  of  no  moment  where  the  Di- 
vine purpose  was  concerned  —  having  taken  in  mar- 
riage a  daughter  of  the  Irish  king 

But  .  .  .  the  ingratitude  of  her  only  son,  who  could 
not  give  up  to  his  mother's  society  his  last  Sunday 
afternoon  in  England!  She  choked  with  unshed  tears 
and  read  verse  after  verse  of  the  early  part  of  Jeremiah 
without  understanding  one  word,  although  she  was  told 
in  her  leaflets  that  the  diatribes  bore  special  reference 
to  England  in  the  latter  part  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
.  .  .  No,  the  thought  of  John  wandering  about  the 
hayfields  with  Lucy — for,  of  course,  that  girl  would 
lead  him  into  the  hayfields,  perhaps  throw  hay  at  him 
—  constantly  rose  before  her,  and  once  or  twice  a  fewr 
hot  tears  dimmed  her  sight.  ..."  The  Lord  said 
also  unto  me  in  the  days  of  Josiah  the  King:  Hast 
thou  seen  that  which  backsliding  Israel  hath  done?  .  .  ." 

She  had  devoted  all  the  money  she  could  save,  all 
the  time  she  could  spare  to  the  bringing-up  of  this  boy. 
She  had  sent  him  to  college  and  made  him  a  gentleman. 
She  had  done  her  duty  by  him  as  a  mother,  and  this 
was  the  return  he  made.  He  preferred  to  spend  his 
last  Sunday  afternoon  frolicking  about  the  country 
with  a  feather-headed  girl  to  passing  it  quietly  by 
his  mother's  side,  as  he  formerly  used  to  do.  .  .  . 
They  might  even  have  had  a  word  of  prayer  together. 
Mrs.  Baines  was  not  usually  a  woman  who  encouraged 
outbursts  of  vocal  piety  outside  the  chapel,  but  on  such 
an  occasion  as  this.  .  .  .  She  might  not  see  him  for 
another  five  years.  .  .  . 

"  And  I  said,  after  she  had  done  all  these  things, 
Turn  thou  unto  me.  But  she  returned  not." —  Now 


THE  BAINESES  15 

was  it  becoming  for  a  grown  man,  a  missionary  who 
had  occupied  the  pulpit  at  Salem  Chapel  in  the  morning, 
to  go  gallivanting  about  the  meadows  with  a  young 
woman  in  the  afternoon?  What  would  any  of  the 
congregation  say  who  saw  him?  A  nice  spectacle, 
to  be  sure !  — "  And  the  Lord  said  unto  me,  The  back- 
sliding Israel  hath  justified  herself  more  than  treacher- 
ous Judah.  .  ."  "  Let  me  see,"  reflected  Mrs.  Baines, 
trying  to  give  her  attention  to  her  reading,  "  Judah 
represents  the  Church  of  England,  and  Israel  is  ... 
Israel  is  ...  Baines!  For  goodness  sake  don't 
snore  like  that.  You  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  yourself ! 
How  you  can  reconcile  it  with  your  conscience  to  guzzle 
like  a  pig  every  Sunday  at  dinner  and  then  pass  the 
rest  of  the  afternoon  snoring  and  snoozing  instead  of 
reading  your  Bible,  /  don't  know." 

Mr.  Baines's  bloodshot,  greenish  eyes  regarded  his 
wife  with  dazed  wonderment  for  a  few  seconds.  Then 
their  red  lids  dropped  and  a  gentle  breathing  announced 
the  resumption  of  his  slumbers.  For  a  few  moments 
Mrs.  Baines  really  devoted  her  attention  to  the  third 
chapter  of  Jeremiah ;  but  when  once  more  the 
respirations  of  her  spouse  degenerated  into  raucous 
snores,  she  lost  all  patience  with  him,  and  put  away 
her  Bible  and  pamphlets.  She  could  not  stop  in  the 
house  any  longer.  It  was  allowable  to  visit  the  sick  on 
the  Sabbath  day.  She  would  go  and  see  old  Mrs. 
Gannell  in  Stebling's  Cottages  and  read  some  tracts 
to  her.  So  she  shook  off  imaginary  crumbs  from  her 
skirts,  went  upstairs  to  put  on  her  Sunday  bonnet, 
and  left  her  husband  —  though  he  was  unconscious  of 
the  privilege  —  to  snore  and  chuckle  and  drivel  and 
snore  unrebuked  for  a  couple  of  hours. 


CHAPTER  II 

JOHN    AND    LUCY 

JOHN  and  Lucy  strode  rapidly  through  the  outskirts 
of  the  village,  past  the  inspection  of  curious  eyes 
from  over  the  rim  of  window  blinds,  into  the  quiet 
country,  which  lay  sleeping  in  veiled  sunshine;  for 
the  warmth  of  the  June  sun  had  created  a  slight  haze  in 
the  river  vaHey  and  men  and  beasts  seemed  drowsy 
with  the  concentrated,  undispersed  odour  of  the  newly- 
cut  hay.  They  crossed  a  little  stream  by  a  wooden 
bridge,  climbed  two  stiles  —  Lucy  gaily,  John  bash- 
fully, as  if  fearing  that  his  new-born  dignity  of 
preacher  might  suffer  thereby  —  walked  about  a  quar- 
ter of  a  mile  down  a  densely  shaded  lane  where  the 
high  hedgerows  were  flecked  with  pale  pink,  yellow- 
stamened  dogroses,  and  where  the  honeysuckle  trailed 
its  simple  light  green  foliage  and  hung  out  its  lank 
fists  of  yellow  fingers:  and  then  arrived  at  an  open 
space  and  a  broad  high  road.  This  they  followed  un- 
til they  came  to  a  white  gate,  marked  in  black  letters 
"  To  Englefield.  Private."  Without  hesitation,  from 
long-established  custom,  they  raised  the  latch  and  en- 
tered the  dense  shade  of  a  well-timbered  wood  with  a 
glimpse  here  and  there,  through  the  tree  trunks,  of 
open  water. 

Lucy  sighed  with  relief  and  pleasure  when  the  white 
gate  swung  to  behind  her  and  she  was  walking  on  a 
turf-covered  track  under  the  shade  of  great  beech  trees. 
Though  the  scene  was  familiar  to  her  she  exclaimed 
at  its  beauty.  John  mopped  his  face  industriously, 
flapped  away  the  flies,  blew  his  nose,  and  wiped  the 

16 


17 

brim  of  his  hat.  "  Yes,  yes,"  he  would  reply,  looking 
to  see  if  his  boots  were  very  dusty  or  whether  there 
were  any  grass  seeds  sticking  to  the  skirts  of  his  frock- 
coat.  "  Canterbury  bells,  is  that  what  you  call  them  ? 
Yes,  there  seem  to  be  lots  this  year.  Here's  a  nice, 
clean  trunk  of  a  tree.  Let's  sit  down  and  have  our 
talk.  .  .  ." 

"  Oh,  not  here,  John.  It's  too  midgy.  We  will  go 
farther  on  to  The  View :  there's  a  seat  there." 

So  they  followed  the  broad,  turfy  track  which  com- 
menced to  ascend  the  flank  of  a  down.  On  the  right 
hand  the  great  trees  rose  higher  and  higher  into  the 
sky;  on  the  left  the  ground  sloped  away  to  the  level 
of  the  little  lake  with  its  swans  and  water-lilies;  and 
the  turf  near  at  hand  was  dark  blue  and  purple-green 
with  the  bugle  in  flower.  In  the  ascending  woodland 
there  were  tall  ranks  of  red-mauve  foxgloves.  Here 
the  owner  of  the  park  had  placed  an  ample  wooden  seat 
for  the  delectation  of  all  who  loved  landscape  beauty. 

John  threw  himself  down  with  heavy  abandonment 
on  the  grey  planks.  Had  he  been  alone  he  would 
certainly  have  taken  off  his  boots  to  ease  his  hot  and 
compressed  feet,  but  some  instinct  told  him  his  be- 
trothed might  not  think  the  action  seemly.  Lucy 
stood  for  a  few  moments  gazing  at  the  view  over  the 
Kennet  valley  and  then  sat  down  beside  him. 

"  How  dreadfully  you  perspire,  my  poor  John,"  she 
said,  looking  at  the  wet  red  hand  which  clasped  the  rail 
of  the  seat. 

"  Yes.     The  least  amount  of  walking  makes  me  hot." 

"  Well,  but  how  will  you  be  able  to  stand  Africa?  " 

"  Oh,  it's  a  different  kind  of  heat  there,  I  believe. 
Besides,  you  don't  have  to  go  about  in  a  black  coat,  a 
waistcoat  and  a  starched  shirt ;  except  perhaps  at 
service  time  on  Sundays." 

"  What  a  pity  black  clothes  seem  to  be  necessary  to 
holiness!  " — (then  seeing  a  frown  settling  on  his  face) 


i8      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

"  I  wonder  whether  we  shall  see  anything  so  beautiful 
as  this  out  there?  " 

"As  beautiful  as  what?  Oh!  The  view.  Well,  I 
s'pose  so.  I  believe  there  are  some  high  mountains 
and  plenty  of  forest  near  the  place  where  I  am  to  live." 

"  What  is  its  name  ?  " 

"  Hangodi,  I  think  —  something  like  that.  Bayley 
says  it  means  '  the  Place  of  Firewood.' ' 

"  Oh,  that  doesn't  sound  pretty  at  all ;  just  as  if  there 
were  nothing  but  dead  sticks  lying  about.  I  hoped 
there  would  be  plenty  of  palms  and  those  things  you 
see  in  the  pictures  of  African  travel  books  —  with 
great  broad  leaves  —  plantains?  Is  it  a  village?  " 

"  Hangodi  ?  I  believe  so.  I  think  the  chief  reason 
it  has  been  chosen  is  its  standing  high  up  on  a  moun- 
tain and  being  near  water." 

"  Oh,  John,"  said  Lucy  after  a  minute's  silence,  "  I 
do  look  forward  to  joining  you  in  Africa.  I've  always 
wanted  to  travel,  ever  since  I  won  a  geography  prize 
at  school.  Just  think  what  wonderful  things  we  shall 
see.  Elephants  and  lions  and  tigers.  Will  there  be 
tigers?  Of  course  not.  I  ought  to  have  remembered 
they're  only  found  in  India.  But  at  any  rate  there  will 
be  beautifully  spotted  leopards,  and  lions  roaring  at 
night,  and  hippopotamuses  in  the  rivers  and  antelopes 
on  the  plains.  And  ostriches?  Do  you  think  there 
will  be  any  ostriches,  John  ?  " 

"  My  dear,  how  do  /  know  ?  Besides,  we  are  not 
going  out  to  Africa  to  look  for  ostriches  and  lions, 
Lucy,"  said  John,  rather  solemnly.  "  We  have  a  great 
work  before  us,  a  great  work.  There  is  a  mighty  har- 
vest to  be  gathered  for  the  Lord." 

"  Of  course,  John,  of  course,"  Lucy  hastened  to 
reply,  "  I  know  what  is  the  real  object  of  your  mission, 
and  I  mean  to  help  you  all  I  can,  don't  I?  "  (pushing 
back  a  wisp  of  his  lank  brown  hair  that  fell  over  his 
brow — for  he  had  taken  off  the  hot  wide-awake). 


JOHN  AND  LUCY  19 

"  But  that  won't  prevent  me  from  liking  to  see  wild 
beasts  and  other  queer  African  things;  and  I  don't  see 
the  harm  in  it,  either.  .  .  ." 

"  N — no,  of  course  it  isn't  wrong.  These  things  are 
among  the  wonderful  works  of  the  Almighty,  and  it 
is  right  that  we  should  admire  them  in  their  proper 
place.  At  the  same  time  they  are  apt  to  become  a 
snare  in  leading  us  from  the  contemplation  of  holy 
things  into  vain  disputes  about  science.  I  know  more 
about  these  spiritual  dangers  than  you  do,  Lucy," 
continued  John,  from  the  superior  standing  of  his  three 
years'  education  in  London,  "  and  I  warn  you  against 
the  idolatry  of  intellect  "  (squeezing  her  little  kid- 
gloved  hand  to  temper  his  solemnity  with  a  lover's 
gesture).  "  I  knew  a  very  nice  fellow  in  London  once. 
He  had  studied  medicine  at  the  hospitals  and  he  came 
to  Bayswater  College  to  qualify  for  the  East  African 
Mission;  for  he  intended  going  out  as  a  medical  mis- 
sionary. He  was  the  son  of  a  minister,  too,  and  his 
father  was  much  respected.  But  he  was  always  spend- 
ing his  spare  time  at  this  new  Natural  History  Museum, 
and  he  used  to  read  Darwin  and  other  infidel  writers. 
Well,  the  result  was  that  he  took  to  questioning  the 
accuracy  of  Genesis,  and  of  course  he  had  to  give  up  all 
idea  of  joining  the  Mission.  I  don't  know  what  be- 
came of  him,  but  I  expect  he  afterwards  went  to  the 
bad.  For  my  part,  I  am  thankful  to  say  I  never  was 
troubled  with  doubts.  The  Bible  account  of  Creation 
is  good  enough  for  me,  and  so  it  ought  to  be  for  every- 
body else." 

"John!  John!"  exclaimed  Lucy,  shaking  his  arm, 
"  you  are  just  as  bad  as  your  mother,  who  accuses  me 
of  disbelieving  the  Bible  because  I  like  to  take  a  walk 
on  a  fine  Sunday  afternoon.  How  you  do  run  on!  I 
only  said  I  wanted  to  see  elephants  and  lions  in  Africa 
and  you  accuse  me  straight  out  of  '  worshipping  my 
intellect '  or  some  such  rubbish.  Don't  you  know  the 


20     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

chief  reason  I  promised  to  marry  you  was  because  I 
thought  it  was  so  noble  of  you  to  go  to  Africa  to  teach 
the  poor  natives?  Very  well,  if  you  think  African 
wild  beasts  will  be  a  snare  for  my  soul  I  won't  run  the 
temptation,  and  you  shall  marry  some  black  woman 
whose  ears  will  come  down  to  her  shoulders,  and  a  ring 
through  her  nose  as  well,  and  no  doubts  at  all  about 
anything." 

"  Lucy !     I  think  you're  very  flippant." 

"  John !  I  think  you're  much  too  sanctimonious ! 
You're  a  great  deal  too  good  for  me,  and  you'd  better 
find  a  more  serious  person  than  I  am  —  Miss  Jamblin, 
for  instance." 

"  Ann  Jamblin  ?  And  a  very  nice  girl  too.  Oh ! 
you  may  sneer  at  her.  She's  not  pretty,  I  daresay,  but 
she  comes  to  all  the  prayer  meetings,  so  mother  says; 
and  she's  got  a  nice  gift  for  sacred  poetry." 

"  Yes,  /  know  her  verses  —  flimsy  things !  Just 
hymns-and-water,  7  call  them.  She's  got  a  number  of 
stock  rhymes  and  she  rings  the  changes  on  them.  Any 
one  could  do  that.  Besides,  I've  caught  her  lots  of 
times  borrowing  whole  lines  from  Hymns,  Ancient  and 
Modern,  which  I  suppose  aren't  good  enough  for  chapel 
people,  so  they  must  needs  go  and  make  up  hymns  of 
their  own.  And  as  to  the  prayer  meetings,  it's  just  the 
tea  and  cake  that  attract  her.  Bless  you!  I  was 
at  school  with  Ann  Jamblin,  and  I  know  what  a  pig 
that  girl  is.  ...  But  if  you  think  she'd  suit  you  better 
as  a  wife,  don't  hesitate  to  change  your  mind.  Your 
mother  would  be  delighted.  And  I've  heard  say  that 
Ann's  uncle,  who  keeps  the  ham-and-beef  shop  in 
Reading,  means  to  leave  her  all  his  money.  You 
won't  find  Ann  Jamblin  caring  much  for  wild  beasts,  / 
can  promise  you!  Why,  I  remember  once  when  the 
school  was  out  walking  near  Reading  and  we  met  a 
dancing  bear  coming  along  with  its  keeper,  she  burst 


JOHN  AND  LUCY  21 

out  screaming  and  crying  so  loud  that  the  youngest 
Miss  Calthrop  had  to  take  her  straight  back." 

"  Now,  Lucy!  Is  it  kind  to  quarrel  with  me  just 
before  I  am  going  away?"  (Lucy's  unexpected  spit- 
fire prettiness  and  the  hint  she  might  be  willing  to  break 
off  the  engagement  had  roused  John's  latent  manliness 
and  he  felt  now  he  desired  intensely  to  marry  her.) 

"  My  dear  John,  I  wasn't  quarrelling,  I've  nothing  to 
quarrel  about.  I  only  suggested  to  you  before  it  was 
too  late  to  change  your  mind  that  Ann  Jamblin  would 
make  you  a  more  suitable  wife  than  I  should  —  there, 
there!  "  (fighting  off  a  kiss  and  an  attempt  at  a  hug) 
"  remember  where  we  are  and  that  any  one  might  see 
us  and  carry  the  tale  to  your  mother.  Of  course,  I  am 
partly  in  fun.  I  know  it  is  unkind  to  tease  you,  but 
somehow  I  can't  be  as  serious  as  you  are.  .  .  .  Dear  old 
John  "  (the  attempt  at  a  hug  and  the  look  of  desire  in 
John's  eyes  have  somehow  mollified  her)  "  I  didn't 
mean  to  hurt  your  feelings.  .  .  .  Did  I  ?  .  .  .  I'm  very 
sorry.  .  .  .  Just  as  you're  going  away,  too.  .  .  . 
There,  never  mind.  .  .  .  Look  bright  and  happy. 
.  .  .  Now  smile! " 

John's  lips  parted  reluctantly  and  showed  his  pale 
gums  and  projecting  eye-teeth. 

"  What  do  you  think,  John  ?  .  .  .  Let's  get  up  and 
walk  on  to  the  garden  gates,  .  .  .  what  do  you  think 
my  Uncle  Pardew  is  going  to  give  us  as  a  wedding 
present?  A  harmonium!  Won't  that  be  nice?  I 
shall  take  it  out  with  me,  and  then  when  you  teach  the 
people  to  sing  hymns  —  only  you  mustn't  teach  them 
Ann  Jamblin's  —  I  can  play  the  accompaniments.  And 
in  the  evenings  when  you  are  tired  I  shall  try  to  play 
something  that  will  soothe  you.  I  have  never  tried 
the  harmonium  yet,  but  while  you  are  away  I  mean  to 
practise.  It's  just  like  playing  the  piano,  only  you 
have  to  keep  working  the  pedals  with  your  feet,  like  a 


22      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

sewing-machine.  Uncle  Pardew  would  just  as  soon 
give  us  a  piano,  but  I  told  him  what  you  said  about  the 
climate  being  bad  for  them.  So  he  settled  that  a 
harmonium  would  do  better.  I  wonder  what  other 
wedding  presents  we  shall  get  ?  I  can  tell  to  a  certainty 
what  your  mother  will  give  us." 

"What?" 

"  Why,  a  very  large  Bible,  bound  in  shiny  brown 
leather  like  those  in  the  waiting-rooms  at  railway 
stations,  with  a  blue  ribbon  marker;  and  a  dozen 
silver  spoons.  Six  large  and  six  small.  I  know  she 
doesn't  consider  me  worthy  of  the  spoons,  but  she  is 
bound  by  custom.  When  she  was  married  her  mother- 
in-law  gave  her  spoons.  .  .  .  And  your  father  will 
give  us  a  dinner-service  and  a  gross  of  Sparkling 
Cider  .  .  ." 

"  I  hope  to  goodness  he  doesn't.  The  cost  of  trans- 
porting it  up-country  would  be  quite  beyond  my  means. 
I  shall  tell  him  .  .  ." 

"  And  my  father,"  continued  Lucy,  "  is  going  to  give 
me  a  gold  watch  and  chain.  And  mother,  my  own 
sweet  little  mother  —  what  do  you  think  she's  been 
working  at,  John  ?  " 

"  Can't  say,  I'm  sure." 

"  Why,  all  the  house  linen.  .  .  .  Sheets,  pillow- 
cases, tablecloths,  napkins,  and  such  like.  She  has 
been  getting  them  ready  ever  since  I  was  first  engaged. 
.  .  .  John!  You  must  be  very  kind  to  me  in  Africa." 

" Kind  to  you?  Why,  of  course !  Do  you  suppose 
I  should  be  anything  else?  " 

"  You  don't  know  how  I  feel  the  idea  of  parting  with 
mother.  I  love  her  better  than  any  one  in  the  world, 
better  than  you,  John.  She  never  says  anything,  but 
I  know  she  is  dreadfully  unhappy  at  the  idea  of  my 
going  away  so  far  and  for  so  long.  But  then,  I  tell 
her,  we  can't  all  be  old  maids.  Father  isn't  rich  enough 
to  keep  us  all  at  home,  and  I  don't  want  to  go  on  work- 


JOHN  AND  LUCY  23 

ing  at  a  National  school  all  my  life.  .  .  .  Oh,  by  the 
bye,  talking  of  mother,  I  had  something  so  pleasant  to 
tell  yon.  What  do  you  think  Lord  Silchester  has  done  ? 
You  know  mother  was  maid  to  old  Lady  Silchester? 
Well,  when  father  went  the  other  day  to  see  Mr. 
Parkins  about  a  gate  he  met  his  lordship  walking  out  of 
the  agent's  office.  They  got  into  conversation  and 
father  told  him  I  was  going  out  next  year  to  marry 
you  in  Africa.  And  last  Wednesday  mother  got  a 
letter  written  by  Lord  Silchester  himself,  saying  he 
had  not  forgotten  her  faithful  care  of  his  mother  and 
would  she  give  the  enclosed  to  her  daughter,  out  of 
which  she  might  buy  a  wedding  present,  something  to 
remember  Lord  Silchester  by  when  she  got  out  to 
Africa.  And  there  were  four  five-pound  notes  in  the 
envelope.  Mother  was  so  pleased  she  positively 
cried." 

"  Yes.  That  was  very  kind  of  his  lordship.  I  must 
tell  my  mother  when  I  get  back  to-night.  It  may  cheer 
her  up." 

"  Oh,  every  one  has  been  very  nice  about  my  engage- 
ment. The  Miss  Calthrops,  where  I  was  at  school  in 
Reading,  told  me  they  were  working  at  some  aesthetic 
mantel-borders  for  our  house  in  Africa.  .  .  ." 

"  Mantel-borders !  Why,  we  shan't  have  any  man- 
tel-pieces !  " 

"  No  mantel-pieces?     No  fireplaces?  " 

"  Only  a  fire  for  cooking,  in  the  kitchen,  and  that 
will  be  outside." 

"  Oh  well,  then,  we  must  put  them  to  some  other 
use ;  I  couldn't  wound  their  feelings  by  saying  we  didn't 
want  them." 

"  Lucy,  you  mustn't  imagine  you  are  going  to  live 
in  a  mansion  in  Africa.  Our  home  will  be  only  a  cot- 
tage built  of  bamboo  and  mud  and  tree-stems  roughly 
trimmed,  with  a  thatched  or  a  corrugated-iron  roof. 
I  don't  suppose  it  will  contain  more  than  four  rooms  — 


24     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIQHT  THING 

a  bedroom,  a  bathroom,  a  sitting-room;  a  store  and  an 
outside  kitchen." 

"  Well,  but  even  a  log-hut  might  be  made  pretty 
inside,  with  some  '  art '  draperies  and  cushions  and  a 
few  Japanese  fans.  I  mean  to  make  our  home  as 
pretty  as  possible.  Shall  we  have  a  garden?" 

"  Oh,  I  daresay  —  a  kitchen  garden,  certainly.  For 
the  Mission  Committee  wants  to  encourage  the  planting 
of  vegetables  and  even  some  degree  of  farming,  so  that 
we  may  live  as  much  as  possible  on  local  products.  We 
are  taking  out  spades  and  hoes  and  rakes  in  plenty,  a 
small  plough,  an  incubator,  and  any  amount  of  useful 
seeds." 

"  I'm  sure,"  said  Lucy,  still  musing,  "  there  ought 
to  be  lovely  wild  flowers  in  Africa  and  beautiful  ferns, 
too.  I  mean  to  have  a  little  wild  garden  of  my  own, 
and  I  shall  press  the  flowers  and  send  -them  to  mother 
in  my  letters." 

"  I  daresay  you  will  be  able  to  do  that,  when  you 
have  finished  your  household  work  and  done  your 
teaching  in  the  school." 

"  Teaching  in  the  school?  " 

"  Why,  of  course  you  will  help  me  in  that.  You'll 
have  to  take  the  girls'  class,  whilst  I  take  the  boys'." 

"  Oh,  shall  I  ?  That's  rather  horrid.  I  didn't  think 
I  was  going  out  to  Africa  to  teach,  just  the  same  as  at 
home.  The  National  School  children  at  Aldermaston 
are  quite  tiresome  enough.  What  will  little  black 
girls  be  like,  I  wonder  ?  " 

"  I'm  told  they're  very  quick  at  learning.  ...  I 
am  sorry,"  continued  John,  rather  portentously,  "  that 
you  don't  quite  seem  to  realize  the  nature  of  the  duties 
you  are  about  to  undertake.  I  love  you  very  dearly, 
Lucy  " —  and  a  tremor  in  his  voice  showed  sincerity  — 
"  but  that  isn't  the  only  reason  I  have  asked  you  to 
come  out  to  me  in  Africa  and  be  my  wife.  I  want  a 
helpmeet,  not  a  playmate;  one  who  will  aid  me  in 


JOHN  AND  LUCY  25 

bringing  these  heathen  to  a  knowledge  of  God's  good- 
ness; not  an  idle  woman  who  only  thinks  of  pick- 
ing wild  flowers  and  ornamenting  her  house.  Don't 
pout,  dear.  I  only  want  to  save  you  disappointment. 
You  are  not  coming  out  to  a  life  of  luxury,  but  one  of 
hard  work.  Besides,  it  would  be  hardly  fair  to  the 
Mission  if  you  did  not  take  certain  duties  on  yourself, 
because  when  I  am  married  they  will  increase  my  pay 
to  two  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  a  year." 

"  What  do  you  get  when  you  are  single  ?  " 

"  One  hundred  and  eighty.  You  see  a  married  man 
gets  extra  pay  because  it  is  always  supposed  his  wife 
will  add  her  work  to  his.  A  married  missionary,  too, 
has  more  influence  with  the  natives." 

"  All  the  same,  John,  we  shall  sometimes  make  time 
to  steal  away  by  ourselves  and  have  a  nice  little  picnic 
without  any  of  those  horrid  black  people  near  us.  .  .  ." 

"  Horrid  black  people,  Lucy,  have  immortal 
souls.  .  .  ." 

"  I  daresay,  but  that  doesn't  prevent  their  having 
black  bodies  and  looking  like  monkeys.  However,  I 
daresay  I  shall  get  used  to  them.  And  if  I  don't  at 
first  .  .  .  By  the  bye,  John,  I  forgot  to  ask,  but  I 
wanted  to,  so  as  to  relieve  mother's  mind  —  are  they 
cannibals?  " 

"  What,  the  people  of  Hangodi  ?  I  don't  know,  but 
I  scarcely  think  so.  And  if  they  were,  we  should  have 
all  the  more  credit  in  converting  them." 

"  Yes ;  but  suppose  they  wouldn't  wait  to  be  con- 
verted, but  ate  you  first?" 

"  The  little  I've  read  and  heard  shows  me  they 
would  never  do  that.  African  cannibals,  it  seems,  are 
rather  careful  whom  they  eat.  Generally  only  their 
war  captives  or  their  old  people.  They  wouldn't  eat  a 
peaceful  stranger,  a  white  man.  However,  on  the 
east  side  of  Africa  the  negroes  are  not  cannibals,  any 
more  than  we  are." 


26      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

"  Isn't  it  curious,  John,  to  think  what  different 
ideas  of  right  and  wrong  prevail  amongst  the  peoples 
of  the  world?  Here,  you  say,  there  are  some  tribes  in 
Africa  which  eat  their  own  relations.  Well,  I  daresay 
it  is  thought  quite  a  right  and  proper  thing  to  do  —  out 
there  —  just  as  we  in  England  think  the  old  folk  ought 
to  be  cherished  and  taken  care  of,  and  kept  alive  as 
long  as  possible.  Only  fancy  how  funny  it  would 
sound  to  us  to  be  told  that  Mr.  Jones  showed  very  bad 
feeling  because  he  wouldn't  join  his  brother  and  sis- 
ter in  eating  up  old  Aunt  Brown !  And  yet  I  daresay 
that  is  what  cannibal  scandal-mongers  often  say  to  one 
another.  Isn't  it  wonderful  how  one  lot  of  human 
beings  can  think  and  act  so  differently  to  another  lot; 
and  yet  each  party  considers  that  nobody  is  right  but 
those  who  believe  as  they  do?  Supposing  one  day 
some  black  missionaries  landed  in  England,  dressed  in 
large  earrings,  bead  necklaces,  pocket  handkerchiefs  and 
nothing  else,  and  tried  to  persuade  us  to  worship  some 
hideous  idol  and  leave  off  wearing  so  many  clothes. 
How  astonished  we  would  be  ...  and  yet  they  would 
think  they  were  doing  right,  just  as  our  missionaries 
do  who  go  out  to  teach  savages  the  Gospel.  .  .  ." 

"  Well,  I  confess  I  don't  see  the  resemblance.  What 
we  preach  is  the  Truth,  the  Living  Truth.  What  they 
believe  is  a  lie  of  the  Devil." 

"  Yes,  but  they  don't  know  it  is.  They  must  think 
it  is  the  truth  or  they  wouldn't  go  on  believing  in  it 
year  after  year.  When  I  was  teaching  geography 
the  other  day,  I  was  quite  astonished  to  find  in  the 
Manual  that  about  four  or  five  hundred  millions  of 
people  were  Buddhists.  Isn't  it  dreadful  to  think  of 
their  all  being  wrong,  all  living  in  vain.  Surely  God 
won't  punish  them  for  it  hereafter?  " 

"  It's  hard  to  say.  If  they  had  the  means  of  grace 
offered  to  them  and  rejected  the  Message  I  should 
think  He  would.  But  that  is  the  chief  object  of  our 


JOHN  AND  LUCY  27 

Foreign  Missions,  to  teach  the  heathen  the  true  princi- 
ples of  Christianity  and  bring  the  Light  of  the  Gospel 
to  them  that  sit  in  darkness.  When  this  has  been  done 
throughout  the  earth,  no  one  will  then  be  able  to  say  he 
sinned  in  ignorance,  '  because  he  knew  not  the  way  of 
Life.'  ' 

"  And  yet,  John,  see  here  in  England  what  different 
views  of  religion  even  good  people  take.  Father  goes 
to  Church ;  you  go  to  Chapel ;  and  each  thinks  the  other 
on  the  wrong  road  to  Heaven." 

"  Oh  no !  Lucy,  I  wouldn't  go  so  far  as  that.  Of 
course,  I  believe  that  our  Connection  has  been  vouch- 
safed a  special  revelation  of  God's  Will  and  Purpose 
among  men.  But  all  the  same  I  feel  sure  that  many  a 
Church  person  comes  into  the  way  of  Truth  though  it 
may  be  after  much  tribulation.  Why,  I  wouldn't  deny 
that  even  Roman  Catholics  may  be  saved,  if  they  have 
led  a  godly  life  and  acted  up  to  their  lights.  At  the 
same  time,  those  who  have  the  Truth  among  them  and 
are  wilfully  blind  to  its  teaching  are  incurring  a  heavy 
responsibility." 

"  Then  you  think  father  stands  less  chance  of  being 
saved  than  you  do?  " 

"  Well  .  .  .  yes  ...  I  do ;  because  in  his  Church 
he  does  not  possess  the  same  means  of  grace  as  are 
given  to  our  Connection." 

"  But  he  is  so  good,  so  kind  to  every  one,  so  fair  in 
his  dealings  .  .  ." 

"  Good  works  without  faith  are'  insufficient  to  save  a 
man." 

"  Well,  for  my  part,  I  can't  believe  that  any  one  will 
be  lost  because  he  may  not  follow  the  most  correct  kind 
of  religion.  I  can't  believe  that  God  will  punish  any 
one  who  isn't  very,  very  wicked  indeed.  He  is  so 
great;  we  are  so  little.  .  .  .  Just  think,  supposing  we 
saw  an  ant  doing  anything  wrong,  should  we  feel 
obliged  to  hurt  it  or  burn  it  ?  Should  we  not  be  rather 


28     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

amused  and  pitiful?     And  mustn't  we  seem  the  very 
tiniest  of  ants  to  God?  " 

"  Ah,  Lucy !  The  belief  in  the  fierce  judgments  of 
the  Almighty  is  a  fundamental  Truth  of  our  religion, 
and  if  your  faith  in  that  is  shaken,  everything  will  begin 
to  go.  ...  But  the  subject  is  too  solemn  to  be  lightly 
discussed,  so  let's  talk  about  something  else.  Have 
you  finished  my  slippers  ?  " 

'  Yes,  and  they're  perfectly  lovely,  A  dark  blue, 
with  J.B.  embroidered  in  white  silk.  I  shall  bring 
them  with  me  to  the  station  to-morrow.  .  .  .  Why, 
here  we  are  at  the  gates  of  the  garden!  How  we've 
walked  and  how  we've  talked!  And  look,  John," — 
drawing  him  back  from  standing  too  near  the  iron 
gates,  "  there's  his  lordship  on  the  terrace,  and  I  do 
believe  the  young  lady  with  him  is  the  one  he's  become 
engaged  to !  " 

John  looked  in  the  direction  whither  Lucy  discreetly 
inclined  her  head,  beyond  triumphs  of  carpet-bedding 
to  the  terrace  which  fronted  the  south  side  of  the  great 
house.  And  there,  foremost  of  several  groups  of 
Sunday  callers  who  were  taking  tea  at  small  tables, 
they  saw  specially  prominent  a  party  of  three :  a  pretty 
girl  rather  showily  dressed  in  the  height  of  1886 
fashion,  an  old  lady,  and  an  elderly  man,  tall,  a  little 
inclined  to  stoop,  dressed  in  dark,  loose-fitting  tweeds. 
He  had  a  long  face  with  a  massive  jaw  and  rather  a 
big  nose.  But  though  they  were  not  visible  at  a  dis- 
tance of  fifty  yards  there  were  kindly  wrinkles  round 
his  dark  grey  eyes  as  he  suddenly  lifted  them  from 
the  seated  ladies  and  glanced  across  the  flower  beds 
to  see  who  was  looking  at  him  from  the  outer  world. 

This  was  Lord  Silchester;  and  John,  not  wishing  to 
prolong  his  indiscretion,  raised  his  wide-awake  and 
turned  away  with  his  betrothed.  He  and  Lucy  then 
walked  directly  to  Aldermaston,  John  leaving  her  at 
the  railway  station,  where  he  consummated  his  breach 


JOHN  AND  LUCY  29 

of  the  Sabbath  by  taking  an  evening  train  back  to 
Theale,  and  so  returned  to  his  home  at  the  Aerated 
Waters  factory  for  the  last  night  he  was  ever  to  pass 
there. 

The  next  morning,  punctually  at  seven  o'clock, 
Lucy's  father  drew  up  his  gig  before  the  booking-office 
of  Theale  station,  and,  getting  a.  porter  to  hold  the 
horse,  helped  Lucy  down  and  accompanied  her  on  to 
the  station  platform,  where  they  found  the  Baines 
family  already  assembled :  Mrs.  Baines  gloomily  seated 
on  a  bench,  Mr.  Baines  reading  the  old  newspaper 
placards  of  the  closed  bookstall,  and  John  busy  seeing 
his  numerous  boxes  labelled. 

"Hullo,  Baines!  —  and  ma'am  —  hope  you're  well 
...  a  bit  cast  down,  I  expect?  But  there,  it's  a  fine 
career  he's  starting  on.  .  .  .  Still,  it's  always  a  wrench. 
John  " —  extending  his  hand  — "  I've  just  called  in  to 
wish  you  good  luck  and  a  prosperous  voyage  and  a 
happy  return,  by  and  bye.  Mind  you  make  a  comfort- 
able home  out  there  for  my  little  girl !  I  shall  be 
feeling  about  as  bad  as  you  feel,  ma'am  "  (Mrs.  Baines 
kept  a  perfectly  impassive  face  during  these  attempts 
at  sympathy  and  did  not  even  look  at  the  speaker), 
"  next  —  when  is  it  to  be ?  March?  —  when  I  come  to 
part  with  Lucy.  But  life's  made  up  of  partings  and 
meetings,  which  is  why,  some'ow,  I  don't  like  railway 
stations.  Now  I  can't  stop,  and  if  I  could,  I  should 
only  be  in  the  way.  Must  be  off  to  market.  Leave 
you  Lucy.  She'll  walk  back  to  school.  Good-bye, 
John.  .  .  ." 

And  Farmer  Josling  hurried  out  of  the  station  and 
his  horse's  hoofs  sounded  in  quick  succession  on  the 
ascent  to  the  main  road.  Lucy,  left  behind,  actually 
found  herself  regretting  that  father  had  brought  her 
in  such  good  time  as  to  give  her  five-and-twenty  min- 
utes or  more  of  irresolute  attendance  on  John.  When 


30     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

she  had  presented  him  with  the  slippers,  had  squeezed 
his  hand  two  or  three  times,  and  adjured  him  to  write 
from  the  first  stopping-place,  besides  sending  a  post- 
card from  London  to  say  he  was  leaving  "  all  right  " ; 
had  made  a  few  suggestions  about  his  luggage  which, 
in  spite  of  the  urbanity  of  departure,  were  too  futile 
to  be  answered  or  adopted;  and  had  insisted  on  push- 
ing the  band  of  his  blue  tie  under  the  shirt  button  at 
the  back  of  his  neck,  so  that  it  might  not  rise  up  over 
the  collar :  there  seemed  to  be  nothing  left  to  say  or  do. 
The  bookstall  was  not  yet  opened  so  there  were  no 
papers  to  be  bought. 

She  would  have  talked  with  Mrs.  Baines,  who  had 
retired  to  the  little  waiting-room  and  was  pretending 
there  to  read  a  great  roll  of  texts  in  big  print  hung 
against  one  of  the  walls.  But  at  her  first  remark  she 
noticed  Mrs.  Baines's  eyelids  were  quivering  and  her 
under  lip  twitching  in  a  way  to  indicate  that  she  was  a 
prey  to  almost  uncontrollable  emotion.  Although  she 
mechanically  turned  the  leaves  of  the  texts,  her  eyes 
were  not  focussing  them,  and  something  seemed  to  be 
moving  up  and  down  her  lank  throat  which  she  could 
not  finally  swallow.  She  only  answered  Lucy's  remark 
by  an  inarticulate  gurgle  and  waved  her  away.  There 
was  something  so  pathetic  in  her  dismal  ugliness,  in 
her  awkwardly  restrained  emotion,  that  Lucy  was 
suddenly  moved  to  pity  as  she  returned  to  the  platform. 
Her  embarrassment  was  cut  short  by  the  tumult  occa- 
sioned by  the  approaching  train,  heralded  by  the  clang- 
ing of  the  station  bell.  The  train  was  full  and  John 
had  hurriedly  to  pass  all  the  second  class  compartments 
in  review  to  find  a  place  not  only  for  himself  but  for 
the  amorphous  packages  deemed  too  frail  for  the 
guard's  van.  When  at  last  he  had  squeezed  himself 
and  his  parcels  past  the  obstructing  knees  of  the  estab- 
lished passengers,  he  had  just  time  to  twist  round, 
stretch  out  over  his  surly  neighbours'  laps,  and  squeeze 


JOHN  AND  LUCY  31 

Lucy's  timorously  extended  hand.  Then  the  train  gave 
a  lurch  forward  and  a  slide  backwards  which  made  him 
nearly  bite  his  tongue  off  in  an  attempt  to  say  good-bye 
to  his  parents,  and  finally  rolled  slowly  out  of  the  sta- 
tion, while  the  forms  of  father,  mother,  and  sweetheart 
left  standing  on  the  platform  grouped  themselves  for 
one  moment  in  an  attitude  of  mute  farewell  before 
the  advance  of  the  train  cut  them  off  from  his  sight. 

The  retreating  chain  of  carriages  shut  itself  up  like 
a  telescope,  and  the  station  began  to  resume  its  sleepy 
calm.  Mrs.  Baines's  emotion  now  could  no  longer  be 
restrained  from  expression.  She  tottered  towards  the 
waiting-room  and  sinking  heavily  on  to  a  hard  wooden 
seat  she  choked  and  hiccupped  and  sobbed,  and  the 
tears  rolled  regularly,  one  after  the  other,  down  her 
cavernous  cheeks.  Lucy  took  her  trembling  hands  and 
tried  to  soothe  her;  and  then,  Mrs.  Baines,  softened  by 
this  sympathy,  lost  all  that  remained  of  her  self-control 
and  abandoned  herself  limply  on  Lucy's  shoulder. 

"  Oh!  "  she  gasped,  "  I've  parted  with  him  in  anger 
—  he's  gone !  .  .  .  Perhaps  I  shall  never  see  him  again. 
.  .  .  My  boy.  .  .  .  My  only  son.  I  never  said  a  kind 
word  to  him  before  he  left.  I  thought  there  would  be 
time.  ...  I  thought  John  would  come  and  make  it 
up.  I  was  cross  because  he  went  out  walking  with 
you  and  came  back  late  by  train  yesterday.  You  know 
I  always  taught  him  to  observe  the  Sabbath.  But  I'd 
forgive  him  anything  if  he'd  only  come  back  and  give 
me  one  kiss  .  .  .  my  boy.  .  .  ." 

But  John  was  well  on  his  way  to  Reading,  and  the 
London  express,  and  all  his  mother's  tardy  plaints  were 
fruitless  to  recall  him.  Moreover,  he  was  not  percep- 
tive. To  him,  his  mother's  demeanour  had  seemed 
much  as  usual ;  and  he  was  certainly  not  conscious 
that  she  had  parted  with  him  in  anger.  He  was  fond 
of  her  in  a  way,  but  he  had  been  used  from  childhood 
to  her  being  always  in  a  huff  about  something  or  other. 


32     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

Lucy  restored  her  future  mother-in-law  to  partial 
calmness,  straightened  her  bonnet,  re-tied  the  bonnet 
strings,  and  walked  a  little  of  the  way  back  with  her 
towards  Tilehurst,  while  Mr.  Baines  followed  submis- 
sively behind.  For  the  rest  of  that  day  he  enjoyed 
unrebuked  freedom  to  do  as  he  liked.  He  ate  his  fill 
and  even  smoked  a  pipe  in  the  parlour.  His  wife 
having  regained  her  composure  held  aloof  from  him 
in  silent,  stony  grief. 

Lucy  fortunately  encountered  the  innkeeper  of 
Aldermaston  driving  thither  in  a  chaise  and  got  a  lift, 
nearly  as  far  as  her  home,  a  substantial  farmstead  on 
the  Mortimer  road,  close  to  both  church  and  school. 
This  enabled  her  to  begin  her  duties  punctually.  She 
taught  her  girls  and  boys  from  nine  to  twelve  and 
two  to  four.  She  thought  of  John  with  gentle  melan- 
choly during  the  day,  and  even  shed  a  tear  or  two-  at 
night  when  she  concentrated  her  mind  on  the  scenes  of 
her  betrothed's  departure,  especially  his  mother's  wild 
display  of  grief.  But  the  next  morning  as  she  walked 
from  the  farmstead  to  the  school  she  actually  hummed 
a  gay  tune  as  she  picked  a  spray  of  wild  roses  from  the 
dewy  hedge  and  arranged  them  round  her  light  straw 
hat.  At  the  same  time  she  had  a  twinge  of  remorse 
at  her  f orgetf ulness  —  poor  John  was  doubtless  now  at 
sea,  watching  England  fade  from  the  exile's  view ; 
and  she  forced  herself  to  assume  before  her  scholars  an 
aspect  of  restrained  grief. 

Nevertheless,  as  day  after  day  of  summer  weather 
went  by  in  her  surroundings  of  perfect  beauty,  she 
confessed  to  herself  she  had  seldom  felt  so  happy,  in 
spite  of  her  sweetheart's  absence. 


CHAPTER  III 

SIBYL.  AT  SILCHESTER 

THEY  had  ridden  over  from  opposite  directions  — 
he  from  Farleigh  Wallop  on  the  downs  south  of 
Basingstoke,  she  from  Aldermaston  in  the  Kennet  Val- 
ley:  to  meet  on  the  site  of  the  Roman,  Calleva  Atreba- 
tum,  the  modern  Silchester.  This  was  in  the  begin- 
ning of  July,  1886.  The  Roman  city  of  early  Christian 
Britain  was  then  —  and  now  —  only  marked  by  two- 
thirds  of  an  encircling  wall  of  rough  masonry,  crowned 
with  ivy  and  even  trees.  There  were  grassy  hum- 
mocks concealing  a  forum,  a  basilica  and  a  few  houses. 
An  occasional  capital  of  a  column  or  obvious  blocks 
of  ancient  hewn  stone,  scattered  here  and  there  among 
the  herbage,  made  it  clear,  apart  from  tradition,  that 
the  place  of  their  rendezvous  had.  a  momentous  past. 
But  its  present  was  of  purely  agricultural  interest  — 
waving  fields  of  green  wheat,  sheep  grazing  on  the  en- 
closed mounds,  an  opulent  farmstead  —  unless  you 
were  a  landscape  painter  of  the  Birket  Foster  school : 
then  you  raved  about  the  thatched  cottages,  the  old 
church  and  its  churchyard. 

On  this  July  morning  Captain  Roger  Brentham  and 
Sibyl  Grayburn  had  the  untilled  portion  of  the  site  of 
Calleva  Atrebatum  quite  to  themselves.  This,  no 
doubt,  was  the  reason  why  they  had  decided  to  meet 
there  for  an  explanation  which  the  man  deemed  to 
be  due  to  him  from  the  young  woman.  He,  of  course, 
arrived  first,  but  Sibyl  was  not  long  in  making  her 
appearance  from  the  direction  of  Silchester  common. 
A  groom  who  rode  behind  her  at  the  sight  of  Captain 

33 


34     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

Brentham  touched  his  hat  and  trotted  away.  .  .  . 
Brentham  tied  up  the  two  horses  in  the  shade  of  the 
Roman  wall. 

Sibyl  disposed  herself  gracefully  on  a  mound  which 
covered  the  site  of  a  Roman  dwelling,  arranged  the 
long  skirt  of  her  riding  habit  so  that  the  riding  trousers 
and  other  suggestions  of  her  limbs  might  not  be  too 
obvious  to  the  male  eye. 

Roger  was  a  captain  in  the  Indian  Army,  about 
twenty-eight  or  twenty-nine,  strongly  built,  tanned  in 
complexion,  supple  in  figure,  good-looking,  keen-eyed. 
Sibyl  Gray  burn  was  a  decidedly  pretty  young  woman 
of  twenty-five,  the  daughter  of  Colonel  Grayburn  who 
had  recently  moved  from  Aldershot  to  Aldermaston 
and  was  trying  to  live  the  life  of  a  gentleman  farmer 
on  rather  slender  means.  The  Brenthams  and  Gray- 
burns  of  the  younger  generation  were  distant  cousins. 

Roger  (seating  himself  on  the  mound  not  too  near  to 
Sibyl,  and  scanning  her  attentively):  "Well,  you're 
just  as  pretty  as  you  were  five  years  ago  —  a  little 
filled  out  perhaps.  .  .  .  And  this  is  how  we  meet. 
How  utterly  different  from  what  I  had  been  looking 
forward  to!  I  remember  when  we  said  good-bye  at 
Farleigh  how  you  cried,  and  how  for  the  first  four 
years  you  scarcely  missed  a  mail.  .  .  .  And  you  can't 
say  7  didn't  write  —  when  I  got  a  chance.  ...  Or 
that  I  didn't  work  like  a  nigger  to  get  a  position  ^to 
afford  to  marry  —  and  now  I  hear  from  Maud  you're 
going  to  marry  Silchester.  To  tell  you  the  truth  it 
didn't  come,  as  a  complete  shock.  I  saw  hints  of  it  in 
some  beastly  Society  paper  that  some  one  posted  to 
me-  at  Aden  —  I  suppose  it  was  you!  And  this  is  what 
women  call  fidelity! " 

Sibyl  (at  first  keeps  her  eyes  on  the  turf,  but  pres- 
ently looks  Brentham  defiantly  in  the  face) :  "  If  women 
of  my  own  age  were  to  discuss  my  case  —  not  mere 
romantic  school  girls  —  they  would  say  I  had  acted 


SIBYL  AT  SILCHESTER  35 

with  ordinary  common  sense,  and  very  unselfishly.  I 
am,  as  you  know,  twenty-five,  and  I'm  sure  you  won't 
have  enough  to  marry  on  for  several  years  —  I  should 
never  again  get  such  a  chance  .  .  .  and  I  really  do 
like  Lord  Silchester,  you  don't  know  how  kind  he  can 
be  —  and  you  can't  really  care  so  very  much.  You 
reached  England  a  fortnight  ago,  and  never  even  wrote 
to  me.  .  .  ." 

Roger:  "  I  was  too  much  taken  aback  by  that  para- 
graph in  the  World  .  .  .  and  Maud  gave  me  a  hint  in 
the  letter  she  sent  to  my  club.  Besides,  I  had  to  stop 
in  London  to  see  the  Foreign  Office  and  the  India  Office 
.  .  .  and  .  .  .  and  to  attend  a  missionary  meeting " 
(Sibyl  ejaculates  with  scorn:  "  Missionary  meeting!  ") 
"  and  get  some  clothes.  ...  I  had  nothing  fit  to  wear 
when  I  landed.  .  .  ." 

Sibyl:  "  Well,  I'm  not  blaming  you.  I  only  meant 
that  if  you  were  so  madly  in  love  with  me  as  you  pre- 
tend you  would  have  dashed  down  to  get  a  sight  of  me 
before  you  went  hobnobbing  with  your  missionary 
friends  ...  or  bothered  about  clothes.  I  did  not 
want  -my  engagement  to  come  to  you  as  a  shock,  so 
I  did  post  that  World  to  you  and  got  Gerry  to  address 
it  —  and  I  told  Maud,  so  that  she  might  prepare  you. 
But  do  let's  be  calm  and  -sensible  and  not  waste  time 
in  needless  reproaches.  I  must  get  back  to  lunch. 
We've  got  Aunt  Christabe'l  coming  —  she  helped  to 
bring  it  about,  you  know."  (Roger  interpolates  "  Damn 
her!")  "  She's  got  twice  mother's  determination.  .  .  . 
Dear  old  Roger.  ...  I  am  sorry  ...  in  a  way  .  .  . 
but  you'll  find  heaps  of  girls,  much  nicer  than  I  am, 
ready  to  jump  at  the  prospect  of  marrying  you." 
(Here  Sibyl's  eyes  glanced  with  a  little  regret  at  his 
turned-away  face,  with  the  bronzed  cheek,  the  firm 
profile  and  the  upward  twist  of  the  dark  moustache. 
"  And  you  know  our  '  engagement '  was  only  boy-and- 
girl  fun.  Besides,  now  I  know  more  about  things  — 


36     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

I  was  so  young  when  you  went  away — I  don't  ap- 
prove of  cousins  marrying.  .  .  .  Isn't  their  —  I  mean 
aren't  their  .  .  .  children  deaf  and  dumb  or  congenital 
idiots,  or  something  unpleasant?  .  .  ."  (And  here 
Sibyl,  appropriately  to  the  period  in  which  she  was 
living,  blushed  a  deeper  rose  than  the  ride  had  given 
her  at  the  audacity  in  alluding  to  children  as  the  result 
of  marriage.) 

Roger:  "  Nonsense.  Heaps  of  cousins  marry  and 
everything  turns  out  all  right  if  they  come  of  healthy 
stock  as  we  do.  Besides,  we're  only  second  cousins. 
But  of  course  this  is  nothing  but  an  evasion.  You 
thought  you  could  do  better  for  yourself  by  marrying 
an  elderly  peer,  and  so  you  threw  me  over.  .  .  ." 

Sibyl:  "  Well !  I  did  think  I  might,  and  not  selfishly. 
There's  papa  —  more  or  less  in  a  financial  tangle  over 
his  farm.  .  .  .  There's  mother,  wearing  herself  ill, 
trying  to  make  both  ends  meet  .  .  .  and  Clara  and 
Juliet  to  be  brought  out,  and  the  boys  to  be  educated 
and  got  into  professions  ...  ."  (crying  a  little  or  pre- 
tending to  do  so  out  of  self-pity)  "...  I  know  I'm 
sacrificing  myself  for  my  family,  but  what  would  you 
have  me  do?  I  shall  soon  become  an  old  maid,  and 
you  won't  be  able  to  marry  for  ever  so  long.  .  .  ." 

( Roger  mutters :   "  I've  five   hundred  a   year   and 

•  •  •") 

Sibyl:  "  Yes,  but  what  could  we  do  on  that?  Poor 
papa  could  afford  to  give  me  nothing  more  than  my 
trousseau.  .  .  .  Even  on  seven  hundred  a  year,  if  you 
get  a  Consulate,  we  couldn't  manage  two  households, 
and  I'm  perfectly  certain  I  couldn't  stand  the  African 
climate  long,  and  I  should  have  to  come  home.  I  don't 
like  roughing  it,  I  should  dislike  hot  countries;  and  I 
hate  black  people.  .  .  .  No,  Roger  .  .  .  dear  ...  be 
sensible.  ...  If  you  want  to  carve  out  a  great  career 
in  Africa  or  India  you  don't  want  to  be  hampered  with 
a  wife  for  several  years  to  come;  and  then  .  .  .  I'll  — 


SIBYL  AT  SILCMESTER  37 

I'll  find  some  really  nice  girl  to  marry  you,  somebody 
with  a  little  money.  And  Silchester  might  help  you 
enormously.  They'll  probably  take  him  into  the  new 
Government  —  aren't  you  glad  that  horrid  old  Glad- 
stone's gone? —  He'll  be  at  the  Colonial  Office  or  some- 
where like  that  and  I  know  he'd  do  anything  I  asked 
him,  once  we  were  married.  If  you  still  want  to  go 
back  to  Africa  he  shall  get  you  made  a  Consul  or  a 
Governor  or  whatever  it  is  you  want.  .  .  ."  But  Roger 
was  not  going  to  listen  to  anything  so  cold-blooded, 
even  though  all  the  time  an  undercurrent  of  thought 
was  glancing  at  the  advantages  that  might  accrue  from 
Sibyl's  manage  de  convenance.  He'd  be  hanged  if 
he'd  take  anything  from  Lord  Silchester.  .  .  .  He  was 
entitled  to  some  such  appointment,  anyway,  after  all 
he  had  done.  But  there,  he  had  lost  all  interest  in  life 
and  if  he  went  to  the  bad,  Sibyl  would  be  to  blame. 
All  his  interest  in  an  African  career  had  been  bound  up 
with  Sibyl's  sharing  it.  With  her  at  his  side  he  felt 
equal  to  anything.  He  would  conquer  all  Equatorial 
Africa,  strike  at  the  Mahdi  from  the  south,  find  Emin 
Pasha,  lay  all  Equatoria  at  the  feet  of  Queen  Victoria, 
and  in  no  time  Sibyl  would  be  Lady  Brentham 

"  Yes,"  interjected  Sibyl,  "  and  lose  my  complexion 
and  be  old  before  my  time,  riding  after  you  through 
the  jungle,  or  living  stupidly  like  a  grass  widow  at 
home.  .  .  ." 

Yet  as  he  jerked  out  his  tirade  rather  theatrically  she 
noted  him  with  an  approving  eye.  His  anger  and 
extravagance  brought  out  a  certain  boyishness  and, 
made  him,  with  the  freedom  of  the  jungle  about  him, 
still  additionally  attractive  physically.  .  .  .  He  cer- 
tainly was  good-looking  and  in  the  prime  of  manhood 
.  .  .  she  sighed  ...  the  remembrance  of  Lord  Sil- 
chester's  pale,  somewhat  flabby  face,  his  slightly  pedan- 
tic manner,  his  carefulness  about  his  health.  .  .  .  He 
rode  —  yes  —  they  had  already  had  decorous  rides  to- 


38     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

gether,  but  she  imagined  before  the  ride  his  cob  had 
had  some  of  the  freshness  taken  out  of  him  by  the 
groom.  .  .  . 

Sibyl  tried  by  broken  phrases,  and  half-uttered  hints, 
to  convey  the  idea  that  Lord  Silchester  being  nearly 
sixty  —  at  any  rate  close  on  fifty-six  —  and  not  of 
robust  health,  might  not  live  for  ever ;  though  really  she 
wouldn't  mind  if  she  died  first,  men  were  so  perfectly 
hateful,  and  so  was  your  family  —  if  you  were  a 
woman.  You  were  expected  to  do  all  you  could  for 
your  family,  and  abused  into  the  bargain  by  others 
who  held  you  bound  by  foolish  promises  made  when 
you  were  a  mere  girl  without  any  knowledge  of  the 
world.  Still,  there  was  a  possibility  —  just  a  possi- 
bility—  for  weren't  we  all  mortal?  —  that  she  might 
find  herself  a  widow,  a  lonely  widow  some  day.  Roger 
by  then  would  have  made  a  great  career,  become  a  sort 
of  Sir  Samuel  Baker;  he'd  have  discovered  and  named 
lakes  after  royalty;  then  they  might  meet  again;  and 
who  could  say?  Certainly,  if  it  came  to  love,  she 
wouldn't  deny  she  had  never  felt  quite  the  same  to- 
wards any  one  as  she  had  towards  Roger.  .  .  . 

But  Roger  checked  such  philosophizings  rudely,  say- 
ing they  were  positively  indecent :  at  which  she  ex- 
pressed herself  as  very  angry.  Then  leading  out  the 
horses  in  eye-flashing  silence,  Roger  helped  her  to 
mount  and  swung  himself  into  the  saddle.  He  escorted 
her  silently  to  Aldermaston  main  street,  raised  his  hat, 
and  rode  off  up  the  Mortimer  road  with  a  set  face  and 
angry  eyes  on  the  way  back  to  Basingstoke. 

He  paused  however  at  Tadley  to  give  his  father's  cob 
—  borrowed  for  the  day  —  a  feed  and  a  rest.  His 
ride  lay  through  one  of  the  loveliest  parts  of  England 
in  those  days,  before  "  Dora  "  had  commandeered  tim- 
ber from  the  woods  —  to  find  afterwards  she  did  not 
want  it  —  before  farmers  had  changed  tiles  or  thatch 
on  barns  to  corrugated  iron,  and  chars-a-bancs,  motor 


SIBYL  AT  SILCHESTER  39 

cycles  and  side-cars  with  golden-haired  flappers,  school 
treats  and  bean  feasts  had  made  the  country-side  noisy, 
dangerous  and  paper-strewn. 

Insensibly  his  mood  softened  as  he  rode.  It  was 
more  than  four  years  since  he  had  been  home.  Though 
he  had  spent  all  of  his  youth  in  this  country,  save  for 
school  and  military  college,  his  eyes  seemed  never  be- 
fore to  have  taken  in  the  charm  of  English  landscapes. 
Here  was  England  at  its  best  in  the  early  part  of  July : 
poppies  blazing  in  the  green  corn  and  whitish  green 
oats,  hay  still  lingering  —  grey  on  green  —  in  the  fields, 
ox-eyed  daisies  fully  out,  wild  roses  still  in  bloom  in 
the  hedge-rows,  blue  crane's  bill,  blue  vetch,  and  pur- 
ple-blue campanulas  in  the  copse  borders.  The  plump 
and  placid  cows,  with  swinging  udders,  so  different 
from  the  gaunt  African  cattle  with  a  scarcely  visible 
milk-supply,  the  splendid  cart-horses,  the  sheep  —  neat 
and  tidy  after  shearing  —  the  cock  pheasants  running 
across  the  sun-and-shadow-flecked  roads,  the  cawing 
rooks,  and  the  cooing  woodpigeons,  the  geese  and  don- 
keys on  the  commons.  Here  and  there,  off  the  main 
road,  park  gates  of  finely  wrought  iron  with  a  trim 
geranium-decked  lodge  and  a  vista  of  some  charming 
avenue  towards  an  invisible  great  house ;  side  turnings, 
half-overgrown  with  turf,  leading  to  villages  quaintly 
entitled.  Some  of  the  details  his  eye  and  ear  and 
nose  took  in  —  such  as  the  braying  of  barrel  organs  on 
the  fringe  of  an  unseen  fair,  on  a  rather  burnt  and 
blackened  gipsy-befouled  common ;  or  the  smell  of  pig- 
sties in  a  hamlet,  or  placards  in  big  print  pasted  round 
an  ancient  stump  or  on  an  old  oak  paling  —  it  was  irra- 
tional to  call  beautiful.  But  together  they  made  up 
England  at  its  best,  with  old  churches  packed  with  the 
history  of  England,  the  little  towns  so  prosperous,  the 
straggling  villages,  beautiful  if  insanitary,  the  sign- 
posts with  their  agreeable  Anglo-Saxon  and  Norman 
names,  so  pleasing  to  the  eye  after  years  of  untracked 


40     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING  ' 

wilderness;  the  postman  trudging  his  round  in  red- 
and-black,  the  gamekeeper  in  velveteen,  the  hearty 
labourers  in  corduroy,  blue-shirted,  bare-armed  and 
hairy  chested.  All  this  was  England.  "  Was  there 
a  jollier  country  in  the  world?"  (There  was  not,  in 
1886.) 

And  as  to  Sibyl.  .  .  .  How  differently  he  saw  her 
now,  after  four  years!  As  pretty  as  paint,  though 
rather  overheated  after  a  short  ride;  but  how  artificial! 
What  a  delusion  to  suppose  such  a  woman  would  have 
cared  for  a  rough  life  in  Africa.  Why  she  even  spoke 
slightingly  of  India,  a  country  of  romance  far  exceed- 
ing Africa.  Indeed,  he  had  only  turned  to  Africa  and 
African  problems  because  all  the  great  careers  to  be 
made  in  India  were  seemingly  over.  .  .  .  There  was 
nothing  to  be  done  in  India  without  powerful  back- 
ing. ... 

Backing?  It  was  perhaps  silly  to  have  flouted  the 
suggestion  of  Lord  Silchester's  influence.  ...  It  was 
difficult  unless  you  were  related  to  permanent  officials 
or  members  of  Parliament  to  get  a  Consular  commis- 
sion in  East  Africa.  Why  not  gradually  —  gradually 
of  course  —  it  wouldn't  do  to  forgive  her  too  quickly 
—  become  reconciled  to  Sibyl's  marriage  and  pursue 
instead  his  second  desire,  a  great  African  career?  .  .  . 

So  it  was  a  comparatively  happy  Roger  Brentham 
who  cantered  up  the  road  to  the  vicarage  at  Farleigh 
Wallop  in  the  late  afternoon  of  that  day  and  sat  with  his 
sister  Maud  in  the  arbour  enjoying  a  sound  English 
tea.  Maud,  a  pleasant- faced  young  woman  of  thirty, 
the  only  sister  of  three  stalwart  brothers,  one  a  soldier, 
another  a  sailor  and  the  third  intending  to  be  a  bar- 
rister; housekeeper  to  her  father,  an  absent-minded 
archaeologist;  could  not  be  called  pretty,  because  she 
was  too  much  like  a  young  man  of  twenty-five  with 
almost  a  young  man's  flat  figure,  but  she  was  in  every 
way  satisfactory  as  a  sister.  Her  father  was  out  on 


SIBYL  AT  SILCHESTER  41 

some  archaeological  ramble  and  she  was  glad  of  it  be- 
cause she  thought  Roger  might  have  come  to  her  with 
a  heart  to  mend.  No  doubt  he  felt  heart-broken  over 
Sibyl's  defection.  She  looked  at  him  inquiringly  while 
she  poured  out  tea,  but  would  not  of  course  broach 
the  subject. 

"  You've  been  out  a  long  time  with  the  cob.  I  hope 
you  haven't  over-ridden  him  ?  Where  did  you  go  ?  " 

"  To  Silchester  and  back ;  but  I  baited  him  at  Tad- 
ley  and  gave  him  an  hour's  rest  in  Basingstoke;  and 
another  hour  at  Silchester.  I've  jogged  along  very 
quietly,  looking  up  old  haunts  —  and  —  and  I've  seen 
Sibyl  Grayburn.  She  told  me  all  about  her  engage- 
ment." 

"Sibyl?  Then  —  you  don't  mind  so  much?  I 
hardly  knew  how  to  break  it  to  you.  .  .  ." 

"  Mind?  Oh,  well,  there  was  a  boy-and-girl  engage- 
ment, a  flirtation  between  us  before  I  went  away,  as 
you  knew.  But  Africa  drove  all  that  out  of  my  mind. 
Besides,  how  can  I  marry  on  five  hundred  a  year?  .1 
dare  say  Sibyl  has  done  well  for  herself,  and  she's 
getting  on.  Girls  can't  afford  to  wait  and  look  about 
them  like  a  man  can.  By  the  bye,  old  girl,  why  doesn't 
some  one  come  along  and  marry  you?  I  don't  know 
a  better  sort  of  wife  than  you'd  make.  .  .  ." 

Maud:  "  Thank  you,  Roger,  I'm  sure  you  mean  it. 
But  I  don't  suppose  I  shall  ever  marry.  My  line  is  to 
look  after  father  for  the  rest  of  his  life,  and  then  be- 
come everybody's  aunt.  I'm  really  his  curate,  you 
know.  And  his  clerk  and  his  congregation,  very  often. 
Oh,  I'm  quite  happy;  don't  pity  me;  I  couldn't  have 
nicer  brothers  ...  or  perhaps  a  nicer  life.  I  love 
Farleigh- 

Roger  (not  noticing,  man-like,  the  tiny,  tiny  sigh 
that  accompanied  this  renunciation  of  marriage): 
"Jove!  How  jolly  all  this  is:  you're  right.  \'<  I 
wasn't  a  man  I  should  think  like  you.  What 


42     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

one  have  better  than  this?"  And  he  looked  away 
from  the  arbour  and  the  prettily  furnished  tea-table  to 
the  well-kept  lawn  with  long  shadows  from  the  herba- 
ceous border.  Beyond  that  the  wooded  slopes  of  Far- 
leigh  Down  and  the  distant  meadows  of  the  lowland, 
and  then  the  sun-gilt  roofs  of  Basingstoke's  northern 
suburb,  and  the  distant  trains,  three,  four,  five  miles 
away  with  their  trails  of  cotton-wool  smoke  indicating 
a  busy  world  beyond  the  quietude  of  the  vicarage  gar- 
den. He  could  see  the  slight  trace  of  a  straight  Roman 
road  athwart  the  northern  landscape,  Winchester  to 
Silchester;  the  downs  of  Hannington  and  Sydmonton 
and  the  far-off  woods  of  Sherborne.  When  he  was 
queer  with  sun-fever  in  Somaliland  he  would  some- 
times be  tantalized  by  this  view,  like  a  mirage,  instead 
of  the  brown-grey  sun-scorched  plains  ringed  by  low 
ridges  of  table-topped  mountains  and  dotted  with 
scrubby  acacias,  whitened  by  the  drought  .  .  .  and 
would  pull  himself  together,  sit  upright  in  the  saddle 
and  wonder  if  he  would  ever  see  home  again.  And 
here  he  was.  .  .  .  Hang  Sibyl!  .  .  . 

So  when  Sibyl  Grayburn  married  Lord  Silchester  at 
the  end  of  that  July  —  because  he  was  fifty-six  and 
impatient  to  have  some  summer  for  his  honeymoon 
before  returning  to  take  up  the  burden  —  a  well-padded 
one  —  of  office  in  the  Conservative  Government  — 
Captain  Roger  Brentham  was  among  the  guests,  the 
relations  of  the  bride.  And  his  best  leopard  skin, 
suitably  mounted,  was  in  Sibyl's  boudoir  at  Englefield 

awaiting  Lady  Silchester's  return  from  the  Tyrol. 
*  *  *  *  * 

And  in  the  winter  of  1886,  Captain  Brentham  re- 
ceived from  Lord  Wiltshire  the  offer  of  a  Consulate  on 
the  East  Coast  of  Africa  and  accepted  it.  It  was  pro- 
visionally styled  the  Consulate  for  the  Mainland  of 
Zangia  where  the  Germans  were  already  beginning  to 


SIBYL  AT  SILCHESTER  43 

take  up  the  administration,  but  Brentham  was  in- 
structed to  reside  at  first  at  Unguja,  the  island  imme- 
diately opposite  the  temporary  German  capital.  The 
British  Consul-General  for  the  whole  of  Zangia  had 
been  recalled  because  of  heated  relations  with  Ger- 
many. Pending  his  return  Captain  Brentham  was  to 
act  as  Consul-General  without,  however,  taking  too 
much  on  himself,  as  Mr.  Bennet  Molyneux  of  the 
African  Department  rather  acidly  told  him. 

Molyneux,  at  the  Foreign  Office,  was  not  at  all 
pleased  at  Brentham's  appointment :  one  of  those  things 
that  Lord  Wiltshire  was  wont  to  do  without  consult- 
ing the  permanent  officials.  Molyneux  had  not  long 
been  in  the  new  African  Department  (hitherto  dispar- 
agingly connected  with  the  Slave  Trade  section)  ;  and 
as  Africa  had  barely  entered  world-politics,  British 
Ministers  of  State  showed  themselves  usually  indiffer- 
ent as  to  how  the  necessary  appointments  were  filled 
up,  adopting  generally  names  suggested  by  Molyneux, 
so  that  he  was  accustomed  to  nominating  his  poor  rela- 
tions —  he  had  a  reserve  of  wastrel  nephews  and  cous- 
ins —  or  the  friends  of  his  friends  —  such  as  Spencer 
Bazzard  (q.v.,  as  they  say  in  Encyclopaedias).  If 
they  were  "  rotters,"  the  climate  generally  killed  them 
off  in  a  few  months;  if  they  made  good,  they  estab- 
lished in  time  a  claim  on  the  Foreign  Office  regard  and 
got  transferred  to  Consular  posts  in  South  America, 
the  Mediterranean,  and  Western  Europe. 

But  Lord  Wiltshire  was  not  always  asleep  or  unin- 
formed, as  he  sometimes  appeared  to  be.  So  his  Pri- 
vate Secretary  countered  Bennet  Molyneux's  querulous 
Memo  on  Captain  Brentham's  lack  of  qualification  for 
such  a  responsible  East  African  post  by  reminding  him 
that  the  gentleman  in  question  was  well  versed  in 
Arabic  through  having  accompanied  a  Political  Mis- 
sion to  the  Persian  Gulf,  that  he  had  served  in  Aden 
and  Somaliland  and  had  conducted  an  expedition  to  the 


44     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

Snow  Mountains  of  East  Africa  for  the  Intelligence 
Division,  had  contributed  papers  to  the  Royal  Geo- 
graphical Society,  was  a  silver  medallist  of  the  Zoo- 
logical Society,  and  was  personally  vouched  for  by  a 
colleague  of  Lord  Wiltshire's :  all  of  which  information 
for  the  African  Department  was  summed  up  by  the 
Private  Secretary  to  Molyneux  in  a  few  words :  "  See 
here,  Molly;  take  this  and  look  pleasant.  You  can't 
have  all  the  African  appointments  in  your  gift.  You 
must  leave  a  few  to  the  Old  Man.  He  generally  knows 
what  he's  about."  So  Molyneux  asked  Brentham  to 
dine  with  him  and  apparently  made  the  best  of  a  bad 
job  ...  as  he  said  with  a  grin  to  his  colleague,  Sir 
Mulberry  Hawk. 


CHAPTER  IV 

LUCY    HESITATES 

WHEN  the  school  holidays  supervened,  Lucy  spent 
her  vacation  quietly  at  Aldermaston  working  at 
her  African  outfit  —  material  and  mental  —  in  a  desul- 
tory way.  She  supposed  she  would  have  to  leave  in 
the  following  April  to  join  her  betrothed.  April 
seemed  a  long  while  ahead.  She  had  not  even  given 
notice  to  the  school  managers  yet  of  her  intention  to 
give  up  teaching.  It  would  not  be  necessary  to  do  so 
or  to  brace  her  mind  for  the  agony  of  separation  from 
her  home  until  John  had  announced  that  all  was  in 
readiness  and  she  had  received  the  formal  intimation  of 
his  Missionary  Society  that  they  approved  of  her  going 
out  to  join  him  and  would  make  the  necessary  arrange- 
ments for  a  steamer  passage. 

Meantime  she  gave  herself  up  to  the  delight  of  read- 
ing such  books  about  African  exploration  or  mission 
life  in  Africa  as  she  could  obtain  from  the  Reading 
libraries.  They  served  to  strengthen  her  determina- 
tion to  keep  faith  with  John;  while  other  ties  and 
loves  were  pulling  the  other  way.  She  had  in  her 
veins  that  imaginational  longing  to  see  strange  lands 
and  travel  which  is  such  an  English  trait ;  yet  this  long- 
ing alternated  with  fits  of  absolute  horror  at  her  fool- 
ishness in  having  consented  to  such  an  engagement. 
Why  could  she  not  have  recognized  when  she  was 
well  off?  Could  any  one  in  her  station  of  life  have 
a  more  delightful  home? 

The  farmstead  stood  on  a  slope  about  a  hundred  feet 
above  the  Kennet  Valley.  The  river  was  a  mile  away, 

45 


though  little  subsidiary  brooks  and  channels  permeated 
the  meadows  in  between,  and  in  spring,  summer  and 
autumn  produced  miracles  of  loveliness  in  flower 
shows:  purple  loosestrife,  magenta-coloured  willow 
herb,  mauve-tinted  valerian,  cream-coloured  meadow- 
sweet, yellow  flags,  golden  king-cups,  yellow  and  white 
water-lilies,  water-crows  foot  and  flowering  rush. 
Lucy  was  an  unexpressed,  undeveloped  artist,  with  an 
exceptional  appreciation  (for  a  country  girl)  of  the 
beauty  in  colour  and  form  of  flowers  and  herbage,  of 
the  velvety,  blue-green,  black-green  cedars  which  rose 
above  the  wall  of  the  Park  and  overshadowed  the 
churchyard,  of  the  superb  elms,  oaks,  horse-chestnuts, 
ashes  and  hawthorns  studding  the  grassy  slopes  between 
the  house  and  the  water  meadows.  She  loved  the  rich 
crimson  colour  of  the  high  old  brick  walls  of  the  Park, 
and  the  same  tint  in  the  farm  buildings,  varied  with 
scarlet  and  orange  and  the  lemon  and  grey  of  lichen 
and  weather-stain.  The  old  farm-house  in  which  she 
had  been  born  and  had  passed  all  her  twenty-four  years 
of  placid  life,  save  when  she  was  at  boarding-school, 
seemed  to  her  just  perfect  in  its  picturesque  ancientry 
and  its  stored  smells  of  preserved  good  things  to  eat 
and  drink.  Their  garden  was  carelessly  ordered,  but 
from  March  to  October  had  a  wealth  of  flowers,  the 
spicy  odours  of  box  borders,  the  pungent  scent  of 
lavender  and  rosemary,  and  the  fragrance  of  sweet 
briar  and  honeysuckle. 

She  did  not  take  much  interest  in  the  details  of  farm- 
ing—  a  trifle  of  self-conceit  made  her  think  herself 
superior  in  her  bookishness  and  feeble  water-colour 
painting  to  her  younger  sisters,  who  were  already 
experts  in  poultry-tending,  butter-making,  and  bread- 
baking.  But  she  accepted  as  a  matter  of  course  the 
delicious  results  (as  we  should  think  them  now)  of 
living  at  a  well-furnished,  well-managed  farm:  the 
milk  and  cream,  the  fresh  butter  and  new-laid  eggs, 


LUCY  HESITATES  47 

the  home-cured  bacon,  the  occasional  roast  duck  and 
chicken;  the  smell  of  the  new-mown  hay,  the  sight  of 
ripe  wheat  or  wheat  neatly  grouped  in  its  golden 
sheaves  in  chessboard  pattern;  the  September  charms 
of  the  glinting  stubble  with  its  whirring  coveys  of 
partridges,  its  revived  flower  shows  —  scarlet  and  blue, 
bright  yellow,  dead  white,  lavender,  russet,  and  mauve ; 
the  walnuts  in  the  autumn  from  their  own  trees;  the 
Spanish  chestnuts  from  the  Park;  impromptu  Christ- 
mas dances  in  the  big  barn ;  an  occasional  visit  to  a 
theatre  or  a  magic-lantern-illustrated  lecture  in  Read- 
ing. On  one  such  occasion  she  saw  for  the  first  time 
Captain  Roger  Brentham,  the  explorer,  who  whilst 
staying  with  Lord  and  Lady  Silchester  gave  a  lecture 
on  his  recent  travels  and  some  wonderful  snow  moun- 
tain he  had  visited  in  East  Africa.  .  .  .  Why  should 
she  seek  to  leave  such  surroundings?  She  could  read 
and  hear  about  all  that  was  most  interesting  in  the 
world  without  leaving  her  parents  and  her  home.  Yet, 
to  disappoint  poor  John,  who  counted  on  her  coming 
out  to  share  his  work  —  and  if  she  threw  him  over 
she  might  never  get  another  offer  of  marriage  and 
grow  stout  and  florid  like  Bessie  Rayner,  ten  years 
older  than  she  was,  up  at  the  Grange  farm.  .  .  . 

But  was  marriage  after  all,  with  its  children  and 
illnesses  and  house  drudgery,  so  very  attractive  to  a 
dreamer?  Might  she  not  be  happier  if  she  passed  all 
the  rest  of  her  life  at  Aldermaston,  saving  up  her  salary 
as  a  school-mistress  against  old  age  and  a  possible 
leaving  of  the  farm  if  —  ever  so  far  ahead  —  dear 
father  died?  She  had  often  thought,  with  a  little 
encouragement  she  might  write  .  .  .  write  stories! 
.  .  .  and  she  thrilled  at  the  idea.  But  then,  what  ex- 
perience had  she  of  the  world  —  the  great  world  be- 
yond southern  Berkshire  —  which  she  could  set  down 
on  paper? 

So  far,  no  one  had  proposed  to  her  —  even  John 


48     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

had  hardly  asked  her  definitely  to  marry  him.  He  had 
always  taken  it  for  granted,  since  he  was  eighteen, 
that  she  would,  and  from  that  age  herself  she  had 
tacitly  accepted  the  position  of  his  fiancee.  Why  had 
she  acquiesced?  There  was  a  weakness  of  fibre  about 
her  and  John's  stronger  will  had  impressed  itself  on 
her  smiling  compliance.  Her  mother  had  rather 
pursed  her  lips  at  the  alliance,  having  her  doubts  as  to 
John  being  good  enough,  and  John's  mother  being  even 
bearable  as  a  mother-in-law.  This  faint  opposition 
had  made  Lucy  determined  to  persevere  with  the  en- 
gagement. She  had  a  distaste  for  a  farmer  type  of 
husband;  it  seemed  too  earthy.  And  she  wanted  to 
travel.  A  missionary  ought  to  make  a  refined  spouse 
and  be  able  to  show  her  the  strange  places  of  the  earth. 
There  were  sides  of  John's  character  she  did  not  like. 
She  was  not  naturally  pious.  The  easy-going  Church 
of  England  and  its  decorous  faith  were  good  enough 
for  her;  she  loved  this  world  —  the  world  of  the  Ken- 
net  Valley  with  genial,  worldly  Reading  on  one  side 
and  not-too-disreputable,  racing  Newbury  on  the  other 

—  too  well  to  care  overmuch  for  the  Heavenly  Home 
in  which  John  was  staking  out  claims;   if   she  had 
known  the  word  she  would  have  called  John  priggish ; 
instead,   she   said   "  sanctimonious."     Yet   withal   she 
was  conscious  of  a  certain  manliness,  a  determined 
purpose  about  him.  .  .  . 

Perhaps,  however,  in  the  summer  months  and  the 
rich  contentment  of  September  the  balance  of  her 
inclination  might  have  been  tilted  against  him,  she 
might  have  nerved  herself  to  writing  that  cruel  letter 
which  should  say  she  shrank  from  joining  him  in 
Africa;  were  it  not  that  he  wrote  faithfully  from  each 
stopping  place,  each  crisis  on  his  journey.  His  letters 

—  closely   written  in  a   facile   running  hand  on  thin 
foreign  paper  —  were  stuffed  with  conventionally  pious 
phrases,  they  contained  diatribes  on  his  ungodly  fellow- 


LUCY  HESITATES  49 

passengers  who  broke  the  Sabbath  (with  an  added  zest 
from  his  remonstrances),  played  cards  for  money, 
told  shocking  stories  in  the  smoking-room,  and  con- 
ducted themselves  on  shore  in  a  manner  which  he 
could  not  describe.  But  then  he  gave  very  good  de- 
scriptions of  Algiers,  of  Port  Said,  Suez  and  Aden, 
and  made  her  wish  to  see  these  places  with  her  own 
eyes,  smell  their  strange  smells,  and  eat  their  strange 
viands.  His  letter  from  Unguja  announcing  his  ar- 
rival there  in  August  finally  decided  Lucy  to  throw  in 
her  lot  with  John. 

There  was  also  the  further  incentive  that  African 
adventure  —  missionary  and  political  —  was  again  be- 
coming fashionable  and  attracting  attention.  Stanley 
was  starting  to  find  Emin  Pasha ;  others  had  embarked 
or  threatened  to  embark  on  the  same  quest.  More  and 
more  missionaries  were  going  out.  It  was  rumoured 
that  Ann  Jamblin  had  announced  her  intention  to  take 
up  a  missionary  career.  Lucy  wrote  a  little  anxiously 
to  inquire.  Ann  admitted  she  had  toyed  with  the  idea 
as  she  believed  herself  capable  of  teaching  and  even 
of  preaching  to  the  savage.  But  if  she  did  go  it  would 
probably  be  to  West  Africa  where  the  climate  was 
even  more  deadly  than  in  the  South  and  East,  and 
such  a  sacrifice  might  be  more  acceptable  before  the 
Heavenly  Throne  than  the  comfortable  and  assured 
position  of  a  missionary's  wife,  not  expected  to  do 
more  than  make  a  home  for  her  husband. 

John's  first  Uriguja  letter  said  that  Thomas,  Bayley, 
Anderson  and  himself  had  been  very  kindly  received 
there  by  the  Commercial  Agent  to  the  East  African 
Mission  —  commercial  because  from  the  first  it  had 
been  decided  that  a  reasonable  degree  of  trade  should 
go  hand  in  hand  with  fervent  propaganda  and  Brother- 
hood work.  The  Mission  must  strive  to  make  itself 
self-supporting  in  the  long  run  as  it  had  no  rich  church 


5o     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

behind  it.  So  there  were  to  be  lay  agents  v/ho  traded 
in  the  products  of  the  country  and  whose  stores  would 
prove  an  additional  attraction  to  the  native  visitor  and 
inquirer.  The  Agent  at  their  Unguja  depot  —  Mr. 
Callaway  —  had  been  a  trader  on  the  West  Coast  of 
Africa,  agent  there  to  a  great  distilling  firm;  who  had 
become  so  shocked  at  the  effects  of  cheap  intoxicants 
on  the  native  mind  and  morals  that  he  had  thrown  up 
his  employ  and  enlisted  under  the  banner  of  a  Trading 
Alission,  pledged  not  to  deal  in  alcohol  or  gunpowder. 
Mr.  Callaway  had  "  got  religion  "  and  "  found  Christ  " 
(in  Liverpool),  but  in  spite  of  that  —  the  naive  John 
wrote  thus  unthinkingly  —  was  a  very  pleasant  fellow 
who  had  soon  picked  up  the  native  language  and  got 
on  good  terms  with  the  Arabs  of  Unguja.  The  latter 
fully  approved  of  his  teetotalism  —  avoidance  of  alco- 
hol being  one  of  the  few  good  points  in  their  religion. 
John  described  with  unction  the  prayer  meetings  and 
services  they  held  in  Mr.  Callaway's  sheds  and  go- 
downs  on  the  shore  of  Unguja's  port;  though  he  had 
to  admit  that  his  fervour  had  been  a  little  modified  by 
the  rancid  smell  of  the  copra  1  stored  in  these  quarters 
and  the  appalling  stench  that  arose  from  the  filth  on  the 
beach.  But  there  was  plenty  of  good  Christian  fel- 
lowship at  Unguja.  The  representatives  of  the  great 
Anglican  Mission  established  there  —  with  a  Cathe- 
dral and  a  Bishop  and  a  thoroughly  popish  style  of 
service  —  had  shown  themselves  unexpectedly  good 
fellows.  One  of  them,  Archdeacon  Gravening,  had 
presented  the  four  young  recruits  for  the  East  African 
Mission  to  the  Arab  sultan,  and  they  had  seen  him 
review  his  Baluchi  and  Persian  troops  at  the  head  of 
whom  was  an  English  ex-naval  officer.  Even  the 
Fathers  of  the  French  Roman  Catholic  settlement  had 
a  certain  elemental  Christianity  he  had  never  thought 
to  find  in  the  followers  of  the  Scarlet  Woman.  .  .  . 
1  Dried  coco-nut  pulp. 


LUCY  HESITATES  51 

The  great  British  Balozi  or  Consul-General  who  had 
been  the  unacknowledged  ruler  of  Unguja  had  just  left 
for  home  .  .  .  rumour  said  because  he  could  not  get 
on  with  the  aggressive  Germans,  who  were  obtaining 
a  hold  over  the  country.  They  had  paid  their  respects 
instead  to  British  authority  in  the  person  of  a  very 
uppish  and  sneering  Vice-Consul  —  Mr.  Spencer  Baz- 
zard  .  .  .  who  had  great  doubts  of  the  value  of  Chris- 
tianity so  far  as  the  negro  was  concerned.  Mr.  Baz- 
zard,  however,  was  dead  against  the  Germans  and 
wanted  as  many  British  subjects  as  possible  to  enter 
the  interior  behind  the  German  coast  so  as  to  "  queer 
their  pitch,"  if  they  attempted  to  put  their  "  rotten 
protectorate,"  in  force. 

Unguja,  John  wrote,  was  a  wonderfully  interesting 
island,  despite  its  horrible  smells,  its  heat  and  mos- 
quitoes, which  never  left  you  alone,  day  or  night. 
Such  a  mixture  of  Arabs  and  Persians,  Indian  traders, 
fierce,  long-haired  Baluchis,  plausible  Goanese  half- 
castes,  Madagascar  people,  Japanese  and  Chinese,  and 
negroes  from  all  parts  of  Africa.  .  .  .  He  had  already 
had  a  touch  of  fever  and  Bayley  had  broken  out  in 
boils ;  Anderson  had  suffered  from  diarrhoea ;  but  all 
three  were  overjoyed  at  the  prospect  of  leaving,  soon 
after  this  letter  was  posted,  in  an  Arab  "  dhow  " 
which  would  convey  them  and  the  porters  of  their  ex- 
pedition to  Lingani  on  the  mainland,  whence  they 
would  start  on  a  two  weeks'  journey  up-country. 
They  were  taking  with  them  Snider  rifles  and  ammuni- 
tion to  defend  their  caravan  against  wild  beasts  on 
the  road  and  also  to  shoot  game  for  the  caravan's  meat 
supply.  At  Mr.  Callaway's  advice  they  had  been  prac- 
tising with  these  rifles  at  the  shooting  butts  of  the 
Sultan's  army  for  the  past  week.  .  .  .  Thomas  had 
been  told  off  for  Taita.  .  .  . 

Then  ensued  a  long  silence  and  Lucy,  now  thor- 
oughly interested,  was  getting  anxious.  But  in  Jan- 


52     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

uary  came  a  letter  of  many  pages  headed  "  Hangodi, 
Ulunga,  November,   1886."     John  wrote  that  he  and 
his  companions  had  encountered  many  difficulties.     On 
the  fortnight's  march  inland  from  Lingani  their  porters 
had  several  times  run  away  in  alarm,  hearing  that  a 
bloodthirsty   tribe   called   "  Wahumba "   were  on   the 
march,  or  that  there  was  famine  ahead.     The  German 
traders  on  the  coast  had  not  been   friendly,  and  the 
attitude  of  the  Arab  chiefs  in  the  coast-belt  was  surly. 
However,  one  of  these  Arabs,  Ali  bin  Ferhani,  was  a 
kindlier  man  than  the  others  and  had  told  off  some  of 
his  slaves  (John  feared  they  were,  but  what  could  you 
do?)  to  carry  their  loads  to  the  Ulunga  country.     They 
also  had  with  them  a  Christian  convert,  a  native  of 
Ulunga  and   a   released   slave    (Josiah   Briggs)    who 
could  speak  English  to  some  extent  and  was  very  use 
ful  as  an  interpreter  and  head  man.  .  .  .  Well,  they 
had  reached  Hangodi  at  last  and  liked  its  surroundings. 
There  were  mountains  —  quite  high  ones  —  all  round. 
Hangodi,  itself,  was  over  three  thousand  feet  above 
sea  level  and  quite  cool  at  nights.     Indeed  John  now 
regretted  he  had  spurned  the  idea  of  mantel-borders, 
for  they  had  fireplaces  in  the  dwelling-houses,  both 
those  already  built  and  those  they  were  planning.     A 
fire  at  night,  in  fact,  was  often  welcome  and  cheerful. 
The  Chief  approved  of  the  settlement,  wanted  them  to 
teach  his  people,  and  keep  off  the  "  Wa-dachi,"  as  he 
called  the  Germans,  whom  he  did  not  seem  to  like. 
But  the  Chief's  people,  the  Wa-lunga,  were  suspicious 
and  quarrelsome,  and  as  he  could  not  speak  their  lan- 
guage and  had  to  explain  the  Gospel  through  an  inter- 
preter, they  paid  him  little  attention.     The  elders  of 
the  tribe  liked  to  come  and  talk  with  him  in  his  veran- 
dah, that  is  to  say,  they  did  the  talking  —  punctuated 
by  a  good  deal  of  snuff-taking  and  spitting;  and  he 
gleaned  what  he  could  of  its  sense  from  the  summaries 
given  to  him  by  Josiah  Briggs.     It  seemed  to  consist 


LUCY  HESITATES  53 

of  many  questions  as  to  how  the  white  men  became 
so  rich  and  why  he  could  not  teach  this  method  to 
their  young  people.  If  he  tried  to  expound  Sacred 
things  to  them  they  asked  in  return  for  a  cough  medi- 
cine or  to  be  shown  how  to  make  gunpowder  and  caps, 
and  how  to  cure  a  sick  cow.  Yet  he  felt  sure  their 
minds  would  be  pierced  ere  long  by  a  gleam  of  Gospel 
light.  .  .  . 

There  were  also  some  Muhammadan  traders  from 
the  Coast  settled  for  a  time  with  the  Chief,  who,  he 
strongly  suspected,  was  selling  them  slaves,  war-cap- 
tives. Though  the  Chief  seemed  willing  to  listen  to 
their  story  of  the  Redeemer,  he  nevertheless  sent  out 
his  "  young  men,"  his  warriors,  on  raiding  expeditions 
against  the  tribes  to  the  south,  and  they  sometimes 
returned  from  such  forays  with  cattle,  with  men  cruelly 
tied  with  bush-rope  and  their  necks  fastened  to  heavy 
forked  sticks,  and  with  weeping  young  women  whom 
they  took  as  wives.  .  .  .  The  Wangwana,  as  these 
black  "  Arabs  "  were  called,  were  very  hostile  to  his 
mission  —  more  so  sometimes  than  the  real  Arabs. 
Occasionally  he  had  met  a  white-skinned  Arab  who 
reminded  him  most  strongly  of  the  Bible  patriarchs, 
and  who  seemed  very  desirous  of  being  on  friendly 
terms  with  the  white  man.  But  these  black  Arabs  who 
spoke  Swahili,  the  language  of  Unguja,  though  they 
affected  outward  politeness,  were  working  hard  against 
the  good  influence  of  the  East  African  Mission  and 
trying  to  persuade  the  Chief  to  reconsider  his  first 
grant  of  land  and  expel  the  white  people  who  were 
spies  in  the  service  of  the  great  Balozi  and  the  English 
men-of-war,  watching  to  intercept  slave  dhows.  .  .  . 

The  children  of  the  Wa-lunga  were  frightened  of  him 
and  his  two  companions  and  could  not  be  induced, 
even  by  gifts  of  beads,  to  sit  on  their  knees.  But  their 
mothers,  on  the  other  .hand,  worried  the  white  men  in- 
cessantly for  beads  and  calico,  soap  and  salt,  which 


54     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

last  they  ate  as  though  it  was  a  sweetmeat.  Yet  they 
ran  away  when  he  sent  for  the  interpreter  and  tried  to 
tell  them  about  God.  One  woman  had  shouted  back 
at  him  that  it  was  very  wicked  to  talk  about  God;  it 
would  only  draw  down  the  lightning  .  .  .  much  bet- 
ter leave  God  alone  and  then  He  left  you  alone  — 
this  at  least  was  how  Josiah  had  translated  her 
speech. 

He  could  not  see  any  idols  about  the  place.  He 
fancied  the  people  worshipped  the  spirits  of  the  de- 
parted, which  they  believed  to  dwell  in  large  hollow 
trees.  They  were  also  terribly  afraid  of  witch- 
craft. .  .  . 

Hangodi  was,  however,  rather  a  pretty  district,  and 
Lucy  would  be  pleased  with  the  site  the  Mission  had 
chosen.  Bayley,  who  had  some  knowledge  of  survey- 
ing, made  out  its  altitude  above  sea-level  to  be  3,500 
feet,  more  or  less.  There  was  a  clear  stream  of  water 
running  through  a  gorge  below  the  Mission  enclosure 

—  for  they  had  constructed  a  rough  hedge.     A  few 
wild  date  palms  might  be  seen  in  the  stream  valley  and 
there  were  plenty  of  pretty  ferns  and  wild  flowers. 

As  to  lions ;  they  could  be  heard  roaring  every  night 
in  the  open  country,  but  hitherto  he  had  not  actually 
seen  one.  Then  with  a  few  devout  phrases  and  others 
expressive  of  his  longing  for  her  to  join  him  the  letter 
came  to  a  conclusion. 

During  all  this  time  Lucy  saw  little  of  the  Baines 
family.  But  a  few  days  after  she  had  read  this  letter 
from  Hangodi,  Mr.  Baines  called  on  Lucy  at  the  school 

—  it  was  at  the  beginning  of  February  —  and  put  into 
her  hands  a  copy  of  Light  to  Them  tJiat  Sit  in  Dark- 
ness.    "  There's  a  letter  in  here  of  John's  which  they've 
printed,"  said  Mr.  Baines  with  considerable  exultation, 
"  and  mother  thought  you  might  like  to  read  it.     Mind 
you  return  the  magazine  to  her  when  you've  done  so. 


LUCY  HESITATES  55 

Good-bye.     S'pese  you   are   starting   in  a   couple   of 
months?  '' 

Lucy  found  a  column  scored  at  the  side  with  pencil, 
where  the  following  matter  appeared: 

BLESSED  NEWS  FROM  EAST  AFRICA 

We  have  received  the  following  intelligence  from  Brother  John 
Baines,  who  has  recently  joined  the  East  African  Mission: 

HANGODI,  NGURU, 

November  20,  1886. 
MY  DEAR  MR.  THOMPSON, — 

We  arrived  here  about  a  month  ago,  after  a  pleasant  stay 
with  the  brethren  at  Unguja.  We  reached  Hangodi  in  about 
two  weeks  of  travel  from  the  port  of  Lingani,  accompanied  by 
Brothers  Anderson  and  Bayley,  and  were  greeted  most  warmly 
on  arrival  by  Brothers  Boley  and  Batworth  —  the  "  busy  B.'s," 
as  they  are  called  —  who  feared  from  the  rumours  afloat  that  we 
should  be  stopped  by  native  disturbances  on  the  road.  We 
brought  with  us  from  Unguja  Josiah  Briggs,  a  convert,  who  was 
originally  a  freed  slave  from  this  very  district  of  Hangodi.  He 
has  lived  for  five  years  at  our  depot  in  Unguja  or  at  the  Presby- 
terian Mission  station  at  Dombasi.  He  will  be  able  to  assist 
me  materially  as  interpreter  among  the  Wa-lunga  as  Kagulu  is 
his  native  tongue. 

The  journey  from  Lingani  to  Hangodi  was  rather  a  fatiguing 
one  as  the  donkeys  we  took  with  us  to  ride  either  fell  sick  — 
poisoned  by  some  herb,  or  strayed  and  were  eaten  by  lions.  So 
we  ended  by  having  to  walk.  Our  Unguja  porters  ran  away  be- 
fore we  had  got  far  inland,  scared  by  rumours  of  Wahumba 
raids  or  stories  of  the  famine  raging  in  the  interior ;  but  a 
kindly  Arab,  who  is  supposed  to  have  known  Dr.  Livingstone, 
came  to  our  assistance  and  sent  a  large  number  of  his  people  to 
convey  us  and  our  loads  to  Ulunga,  as  this  district  is  called 
(the  root  —  lunga  —  means  the  "good"  or  the  "beautiful" 
country,  as  indeed  it  will  be,  when  it  has  received  the  Blessed 
Gospel). 

Mr.  Goulburn,  who  is  pioneering  and  is  "  spying  out  the  land  " 
to  the  north,  travelled  with  us  as  far  as  Gonja  and  then  quitted 
us,  after  we  had  prayed  together  in  my  tent.  We  turned  south 
and  continued  our  journey  to  the  Ulunga  mountains  with  the 
Arab's  porters  and  guided  by  Josiah  Briggs. 

The  country  became  very  hilly,  and  as  it  was  the  beginning 
of  the  rainy  season  we  had  occasional  violent  thunder-storms 


56     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

and  the  streams  were  difficult  to  cross.  Fortunately,  however, 
the  early  arrival  of  the  rains  kept  us  from  attacks  on  the  part 
of  the  terrible  roving  tribes  of  Masai  or  "  Wahumba,"  who  only 
seem  to  exist  to  raid  and  ravage  their  agricultural  neighbours, 
but  who  don't  like  doing  so  in  wet  weather.  Moreover,  they 
appreciate  the  springing  up  of  the  new  green  grass  after  the 
drought  and  prefer  taking  their  cattle  —  whom  they  worship — • 
out  to  graze.  This  new  grass  attracts  to  the  district  incredible 
herds  of  antelopes  and  zebras  and  gives  the  lions  and  Jeopards 
such  abundance  of  food  and  occupation  that  they  never  deemed 
it  worth  their  while  to  attack  our  caravan,  though  during  the 
dry  season  —  the  Arabs  told  us  —  you  could  hardly  get  through 
the  plains  without  losing  a  proportion  of  your  carriers  from 
lions,  leopards  or  hyenas.  This  early  breaking  of  the  rainy 
season  therefore  seemed  to  us  an  act  of  special  intervention  on 
the  part  of  Divine  Providence  to  ensure  our  safe  arrival  at  our 
destination.  When  we  reached  Hangodi  we  were  hospitably  re- 
ceived by  the  Chief  Mbogo,  to  whom  Brother  Batworth  intro- 
duced us.  Mbogo  rules  over  the  district  of  Ulunga.  He  re- 
joiced greatly  that  we  had  come  to  teach  the  Gospel  and  asked 
me  many  questions  about  the  Christian  faith.  An  earnest  spirit 
of  inquiry  prevails  amongst  all  his  people,  who  are  flocking  to 
see  us  and  who  listen  with  rapt  attention  to  my  simple  exhorta- 
tions delivered  through  the  medium  of  Josiah.  The  Arab  traders 
at  this  place  are  very  annoyed  that  an  English  missionary  should 
settle  here  and  expose  their  wicked  traffic  in  slaves,  but  I  hope 
to  be  able  to  frustrate  their  intrigues  and  induce  the  Chief  to 
expel  them.  For  that  reason  I  am  working  hard  at  the  language 
with  Josiah  and  with  the  vocabularies  I  have  obtained  from  Mr. 
Goulburn  and  Mr.  Boley. 

Many  of  the  women  in  this  place  are  eager  to  hear  the  blessed 
tidings  and  bring  their  little  ones  with  them  while  they  listen 
spell-bound  to  our  teaching.  I  trust  soon  to  have  beside  me 
one  whose  sweet  duty  it  will  be  to  lead  these  poor  sinful  crea- 
tures into  the  way  of  Truth  and  Life.  .  .  . 

The  building  of  the  houses,  school  and  chapel  was  commenced, 
as  you  know,  two  years  ago  by  Brothers  Boley  and  Batworth, 
whom  we  relieved,  and  who  are  going  to  Taita  to  perform  sim- 
ilar work  for  Mr.  Goulburn.  In  completing  the  station  we  shall 
be  our  own  architects,  but  Mr.  Callaway  has  sent  us  up  two 
Swahili  masons  and  a  Goanese  carpenter  from  Unguja.  Ander- 
son is  already  doing  a  brisk  business  at  our  improvised  store. 

And  now,  dear  Mr.  Thompson,  I  remain  in  all  Christian  love, 

Yours  sincerely, 

JOHN  BAINES. 


CHAPTER  V 


it  is  really  settled,  Roger,  that  you  are  to  go  out 
to  that  African  place  with  the  violent  name  — 
something  about  '  gouging  '  I  know,"  said  Lady  Sil- 
chester,  one  evening  in  the  winter-spring  of  1887. 

She  believed  she  was  enceinte  and  treated  herself  — 
and  was  being  treated  —  with  the  utmost  consideration. 
Lord  Silchester  was  transfused  with  delight  at  the  pos- 
sibility of  having  a  direct  heir  and  promised  himself 
the  delicious  revenge  of  taunting  those  officious  friends 
and  advisers  who  had  taxed  him  with  folly  in  marry- 
ing a  woman  thirty  years  younger  than  himself.  So 
she  was  lying  on  a  couch  in  the  magnificent  drawing- 
room  of  6a  Carlton  House  Terrace,  clad  in  some  an- 
ticipation of  the  tea-gown.  It  was  nine  o'clock  in  the 
evening,  and  Roger  Brentham  had  been  summoned  to 
dine  alone  with  her  and  her  husband  and  talk  over  his 
personal  affairs.  Lord  Silchester  would  presently  leave 
for  the  House  of  Lords;  meantime  he  was  half  listen- 
ing to  their  conversation,  half  absorbed  in  a  volume  of 
Cascionovo's  Neapolitan  Society  in  the  Eighteenth  Cen- 
tury in  its  French  edition. 

Roger,  with  one  eye  and  one  ear  on  Lord  Silchester, 
replied :  '  Yes.  Lord  Wiltshire  has  definitely  offered 
me  the  appointment  —  through  Tarrington,  of  course 
—  his  Private  Secretary;  and  equally  definitely  I've 
accepted  it.  But  technically  it's  not  Unguja,  nothing 
so  big.  Unguja  is  an  Agency  and  Consulate-General 
and  is  still  held  by  Sir  James  Eccles,  who  is  only  at 
home  on  leave  of  absence.  My  post  is  a  Consulate  for 
the  mainland,  for  the  part  the  German  company  is 

57 


58      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

taking  over.  It  is  styled  '  for  the  mainland  of  Zangia 
with  residence  at  the  port  of  Medina/  It  is  supposed 
the  Germans  are  going  to  style  their  new  protectorate 
'  Zangia,'  the  old  classical  name  of  the  Persians  for 
that  part  of  East  Africa." 

Sibyl  Silchester  yawned  slightly  and  concealed  the 
yawn  with  her  fan  of  Somali  ostrich  plumes  which 
Roger  had  given  her.  Lord  Silchester  put  down  his 
book  and  turned  suddenly  towards  Roger. 

"  How  do  you  get  on  at  the  F.O.  ?  " 

"  Oh,  pretty  well,  sir,"  replied  Roger,  who  still  kept 
up  his  military  manners  with  older  men  in  higher  po- 
sitions than  his  own.  "  Pretty  well.  I've  been  work- 
ing in  the  African  Department  all  the  autumn  and 
I  think  I've  got  the  hang  of  things;  I  mean,  how  to 
conduct  a  Consulate  and  the  sort  of  policy  we  are  to 
observe  in  East  Africa.  I've  been  down  in  Kent,  also, 
staying  with  Sir  James  Eccles  and  being  indoctrinated 
by  him  with  the  aims  and  ambitions  he  has  been  pur- 
suing ever  since  1866.  He's  a  grand  man!  I  hope 
they  send  him  back.  I  should  be  proud  to  serve  under 
him.  Of  course,  I  saw  something  of  him  at  Unguja 
in  '8s-'86  .  .  ." 

"  H'm,  well,  I've  no  business  to  express  an  opinion, 
but  I  much  doubt  whether  Wiltshire  will  send  him  back 
—  Wiltshire  sets  much  value  on  good  terms  with  Ger- 
many, and  Eccles  is  hated  by  the  Germans.  ..." 

Roger:  "  I  know.  .  .  .  They've  told  me  I  must  try 
to  maintain  friendly  relations  with  our  Teutonic 
friends,  especially  as  I  am  to  be,  when  the  Consul- 
General  returns,  '  on  my  own,'  so  to  speak,  in  the  Ger- 
man sphere  of  influence.  Meantime  I  am  to  live  at 
Unguja  and  *  act '  for  the  Consul-General  till  he  or 
some  one  else  comes  out.  Awfully  good  of  you,  sir, 
to  get  this  chance  for  me  .  .  .  it's  rare  good  luck  to 
be  going  out  to  act  straight  away  for  a  man  like  Eccles. 
,  ,  ,  I'll  try  my  utmost  to  do  you  credit," 


ROGER'S  DISMISSAL  59 

Silchester:  "  I  don't  doubt  you  will.  But  don't 
rely  too  much  on  my  personal  influence.  I'm  only 
Chancellor  of  the  Duchy  of  Lancaster  ...  a  minis- 
ter without  portfolio,  so  to  speak.  Cultivate  the 
friendship  of  the  permanent  officials.  Once  you're  in 
—  I  mean  once  a  Secretary  of  State  has  given  you  the 
appointment,  they  are  the  people  who  count.  I  re- 
member when  I  was  in  diplomacy  there  was  rather 
an  uppish  young  fellow  from  the  nth  Hussars  who'd 
been  somebody's  A.D.C.  in  the  Abyssinian  War. 
Dizzy,  to  oblige  '  somebody,'  shoved  him  into  the 
Slave  Trade  Commission.  He  took  himself  and  his 
duties  seriously  and  really  did  go  for  the  American 
slave-traders.  An  Under  Secretary  hauled  him  over 
the  coals  for  trap  de  zele.  Lord  Knowsley  supported 
him.  The  Under  Secretary  sent  for  him  afterwards 
and  said,  '  Remember  this,  Bellamy ;  Lord  Knowsley 
is  not  always  here.  WE  ARE.'  And  sure  enough  after 
Knowsley  left  they  found  out  something  against  him 
and  '  outed  '  him  from  the  service.  Moral :  always 
keep  in  with  the  permanent  officials  and  you'll  never 
fall  out  with  the  Secretary  of  State.  Do  you  get  on 
all  right  with  '  Lamps  '  ?  " 

Roger:  "  Sir  Mulberry  ?  I  scarcely  ever  see  him. 
He's  much  too  big  a  pot  to  take  an  interest  in  me. 
Besides,  he's  keenest  about  the  Niger  just  now.  No, 
I  have  mostly  to  do  with  Bennet  Molyneux,  who  is 
head  of  the  Department;  and  I'm  afraid  I  don't  care 
overmuch  for  him.  I  like  awfully  the  clerks  in  the 
Department  except  that  they  don't  take  Africa  very 
seriously,  think  it  all  a  joke,  a  joke  bordering  rather  on 
boredom.  Still,  they're  some  of  the  jolliest  fellows  I 
know.  It's  Molyneux  I  can't  hit  it  off  with,  and  they 
say  in  the  Department  it's  because  I've  come  in  between 
some  poor  relation,  some  cousin  of  his  he  wants  to  push 
on  out  there.  He  got  him  appointed  a  Vice-Consul  a 
year  or  two  back  and  thought  he  was  going  to  be  asked 


60     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

to  act  for  Eccles  whilst  he  was  on  leave.  And  now 
that  Lord  Wiltshire  has  said  7  am  to  —  I  don't  doubt 
at  your  suggestion,  sir  —  Molyneux  has  turned  quite 
acid.  Especially  when  he  had  to  draft  my  instructions ! 
I  think  also  he  didn't  like  my  setting  him  right  when  I 
first  came  to  work  in  the  office.  He  wrote  some 
minutes  about  the  Slave  Trade  and  about  the  Germans 
which  were  the  uttermost  rubbish  you  ever  read,  and 
he  never  forgave  me  for  not  backing  him  up  at  a  de- 
partmental committee  they  held  —  Sir  Mulberry  pre- 
sided. And  the  mere  fact  that  Thrumball  and  Lands- 
dell  have  been  awfully  kind  to  me  and  had  me  to 
dine  with  them  seems  to  have  soured  him.  And 
when  one  day  Lord  Wiltshire  sent  for  me  to  answer 
some  questions  —  Well,  I  thought  afterwards  Moly- 
neux would  have  burst  with  spleen.  He  threw  official 
reserve  to  the  winds  and  walked  up  and  down  in  his 
big  room  raving — '  I've  been  in  this  office  since  1869,' 
he  said,  '  and  I  don't  believe  Lord  Wiltshire  knows  me 
by  sight.  Yet  he's  ready  to  send  for  the  veriest  out- 
sider if  he  thinks  he  can  get  any  information  out  of 
him.  The  Office  is  going  to  the  dogs  —  and  so 
on.  ..." 

Lord  Silchester:  "  Molyneux,  Bennet  Molyneux. 
I  know  him.  Not  a  bad  fellow  in  some  respects,  but 
a  bad  enemy  to  make.  He  is  a  kind  of  cousin  of  Fee- 
nix's  —  Colonial  Office,  you  know.  Well,  your  fate 
is  in  your  own  hands  .  .  .  you  must  walk  warily  .  .  ." 
(at  this  a  servant  enters  and  informs  his  lordship  that 
the  carriage  is  waiting)  "  I  must  be  off.  Sibyl !  you 
won't  stay  up  late?  Roger,  don't  talk  to  her  for  more 
than  an  hour.  Good-bye.  Of  course,  you'll  come  and 
see  us  before  you  actually  sail?  .  .  ."  (goes  out). 

A  pause. 

Sibyl:  "  You  may  smoke  now ;  but  only  a  cigarette, 
not  a  cigar."  (Roger  lights  a  cigarette.) 

Sibyl:     "  What  dear  old  Francis  said  was  very  good 


ROGER'S  DISMISSAL  61 

advice.  Mind  you  follow  it.  Get  on  the  right  side  of 
these  old  permanencies.  Whenever  Francis  begins  his 
instances  and  illustrations  I  feel  what  a  perfect  book 
of  reminiscences  he  will  some  day  write.  But,  of 
course,  it  wouldn't  do  till  he's  reached  an  age  when  he 
can  no  longer  serve  in  the  Government.  ...  I  want 
him  some  day  to  be  at  the  Foreign  Office  or  at  least 
the  India  Office.  I  do  so  love  the  pomp  of  those  posi- 
tions, the  great  parties  in  the  season,  the  entertaining 
of  delightful  creatures  from  the  East  with  jewelled 
turbans.  .  .  ." 

Roger  (a  little  abruptly) :     "  Are  you  happy.  .  .  .  ?  " 

Sibyl  (turning  her  head  and  looking  at  him  in- 
tently) :  "Happy?  Why,  of  course.  Perfectly 
happy.  Everything  has  gone  splendidly.  And  now 
that  I'm  going  to  have  a  child.  ...  I  do  hope  it'll 
be  a  boy.  Francis  would  be  so  happy.  You  quite 
realize  if  he  has  no  heir  the  peerage  and  all  the  entailed 
estates  go  away  to  some  perfectly  horrid  second  cousin 
out  in  Australia.  .  .  ." 

Roger:  "  In  view  of  that  possibility  I  wonder  he  did 
not  marry  years  ago,  when  he  was  a  young  man.  .  .  ." 

Sibyl:  "My  dear!  How  could  he?  He  was  a 
younger  son  and  in  the  diplomatic  service  with  barely 
enough  to  live  on,  respectably.  And  then  he  got  tan- 
gled up  with  another  man's  wife.  He  thinks  I  know 
nothing  about  that  side  of  him,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact 
I  know  everything.  His  elder  brother,  the  fifth  Lord 
Silchester,  was  an  awfully  bad  lot  —  treated  his  wife 
very  badly  —  they  were  separated  and  their  only  son 
was  brought  up  by  his  mother  to  be  dreadfully  goody- 
goody.  Francis's  elder  brother  died  in  Paris  —  I  dare- 
say you  have  heard  or  read  where  and  how.  It  was 
one  of  the  closing  scandals  of  the  Second  Empire. 
But  then  the  goody-goody  son  married  after  he  suc- 
ceeded—  married  a  sister  of  Lord  Towcester.  She 
was  killed  in  the  hunting  field  and  her  rather  limp 


62      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

husband  died  of  grief  afterwards,  or  of  consumption, 
and  Francis  came  into  the  title  rather  unexpectedly 
five  years  ago.  Then  he  was  embarrassed  by  his  Darby 
and  Joan  attachment  to  Mrs.  Bolsover. —  However, 
then  she  died  —  and  so  —  at  last  he  felt  free  to 
marry.  .  .  . 

"  I  met  him  first  at  a  croquet  party  at  Aldermaston 
Park.  I  saw  at  once  he  was  struck  with  me.  .  .  . 
However,  we  won't  go  over  the  old  argument  again 
which  we  talked  out  that  day  at  Silchester.  .  .  .  D'you 
remember  ?  My  ankles  were  so  bitten  by  harvest-bugs 
after  sitting  on  those  mounds,  /  shan't  forget!  .  .  ." 
(meditates).  .  .  .  "I'm  much  happier  than  if  I  had 
married  you.  .  .  .  My  dear,  that  would  never  have 
done.  .  .  .  But  that  need  not  prevent  our  being  the 
best  of  friends,  the  most  attached  of  cousins.  .  .  .  It's 
a  bore  having  a  confinement  in  the  Jubilee  year.  .  .  . 
I'd  meant  to  rival  Suzanne  Feenix  in  my  entertain- 
ments. .  .  .  But  if  I  give  Silchester  a  boy,  he  will  re- 
fuse me  nothing.  .  .  .  And  I  mean,  as  soon  as  I'm  up 
and  about  again,  to  push  him  on.  He's  rich  — those 
Staffordshire  mines  and  potteries.  He's  got  lots  of 
ability,  but  he's  too  fond  of  leisure  and  isn't  quite  ambi- 
tious enough.  Complains  of  being  tired.  .  .  .  He's 
only  57  ...  but  he  much  prefers  spending  the  eve- 
ning at  home  and  reading  history  and  memoirs.  Still, 
if  Lord  Wiltshire  gets  overworked  at  the  Foreign 
Office,  Francis  simply  must  succeed  him.  He  knows 
everything  about  foreign  policy  from  A  to  Z,  after 
serving  so  many  years  in  Vienna  and  Rome.  .  .  .  Well, 
dear  old  boy,  this  is  really  good-bye.  Make  good  out 
there,  and  don't  make  a  fool  of  yourself  with  some 
grass  widow  going  out,  or  some  fair  missionaryess. 
...  I  suppose  some  of  them  are  fit  to  look  at?  ... 
Play  up  to  the  permanencies,  and  try  to  write  some 
dispatch  that'll  interest  Lord  Wiltshire.  Then  Sil- 
chester may  get  a  chance  of  putting  his  oar  in  and 


ROGER'S  DISMISSAL  63 

have  you  shifted  to  a  better  post  and  a  more  healthy 
one.  After  that  I'll  take  a  hand  and  marry  you  to 
some  nice  girl  with  a  little  money.  ...  I  wonder 
whether  you'll  feel  lonely  out  there?  But  men  never 
are,  so  long  as  they  can  move  about  and  get  some  shoot- 
ing .  .  .  which  reminds  me  I  want  a  lot  more  leopard 
skins.  Don't  mount  them :  I  like  to  choose  my  own 
colours " 

(Enter  Lady  Silchester's  maid.) 

Maid:  "  My  lady,  before  his  lordship  went  out  he 
said  I  was  to  remind  your  ladyship  about  going  to  bed 
early,  so  I  ventured  .  .  ." 

"  Quite  right,  Sophie.  .  .  .  I'll  come  up  in  one  min- 
ute." (Exit  maid,)  "  By  the  bye,  Roger,  I  ought  to 
ask  after  the  other  cousins.  How's  Maud?"  (Roger 
intimates  that  good  old  Maud's  all  right.)  "  Maud  is 
an  excellent  creature ;  I've  always  said  so,  though  in  a 
sort  of  tight-lipped  way  she's  never  approved  of  me. 
Because  she's  lost  her  own  complexion  in  field  sports 
and  parish  work  Maud  suspects  all  other  young  women 
of  powdering  and  painting.  And  Geoffrey?  " 

"  Geoffrey's  ship  is  coming  back  in  May  and  then 
he  ought  to  get  some  leave;  and  to  save  your  time,  I 
might  mention  that  Maurice  will  probably  be  called  to 
the  bar  in  the  autumn  if  he  satisfies  the  Benchers; 
and  as  to  father,  he's  more  gone  over  to  Rome  than 
ever.  .  .  ." 

"  You  mean  Silchester?  " 

"  Yes.  The  vicar  there  is  as  frantic  a  '  Romanist ' 
as  he  is,  and  together  they've  had  a  rare  old  quarrel 
with  the  farmer  who  grows  corn  where  you  got  the 
harvest-bug  bites,  and  objects  to  excavations.  I  think 
father  forgets  at  times  he's  a  nineteenth  century  Chris- 
tian. ...  He  is  awfully  annoyed  at  the  general  opin- 
ion that  Silchester  only  dates  from  Christian  times 
in  Britain  and  that  the  Temple  to  Venus  is  really  a 
Christian  church.  That's  what  comes  from  a  Classical 


64     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

education.  .  .  .  Now  I  shall  get  into  a  row  with  your 
spouse  for  keeping  you  up.  Besides.  You  don't 
really  care  for  the  others.  .  .  ." 

Sibyl:  "  To  be  frank,  I  don't.  You  were  the  only 
one  that  interested  me.  ...  I  ...  well,  then,  Roger, 
this  is  the  last  good-bye  but  one  .  .  ."  (extends  her 
hand  on  which  he  imprints  a  kiss).  "That's  quite 
enough  show  of  affection;  Sophie  might  come  back  at 
any  moment  and  forget  we  are  cousins.  By  the  bye, 
it  might  be  wise  if  you  got  some  one  —  I  dare  say 
Francis  would  —  to  introduce  you  to  the  Feenixes  be- 
fore you  go.  They  might  serve  to  mitigate  the  hostil- 
ity of  Bennet  Molyneux.  Only  don't  fall  in  love  with 
Suzanne  and  desert  me!  She's  got  the  Colonies,  it's 
true,  but  I'm  going  to  have  the  Foreign  Office  before 
you're  back.  .  .  .  You  mark  my  words!  Ta-ta! 
Coming,  Sophie." 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE    VOYAGE    OUT 

LUCY  said  to  herself  she  had  never  felt  so  miserable 
in  her  life  as  she  did  during  the  first  night  on 
board  the  Jeddah,  the  British  India  Co.'s  steamer  that 
was  taking  her  to  East  Africa.  She  occupied  one  of 
the  upper  berths  in  the  cabins  off  the  Ladies'  Saloon, 
in  which  there  were,  as  far  as  she  could  reckon,  five 
or  six  other  occupants,  including  the  stewardess,  who 
passed  her  time  alternately  snoring  on  a  mattress  in  a 
coign  off  the  main  entrance  and  waiting  on  such  of  the 
ladies  as  were  sea-sick. 

The  Jeddah  was  rolling  about  in  a  choppy  sea  off  the 
Downs.  Lucy  felt  a  horrible  sensation  of  nausea  creep 
over  her  at  times,  and  she  clenched  her  teeth  to  repress 
her  inclination  to  vomit ;  for  she  was  too  shy  to  call 
upon  the  much-occupied  stewardess  for  assistance. 
The  back  of  her  head  throbbed  with  pain,  her  eyes  were 
burning  hot  with  unshed  tears,  and  her  poor  throat 
ached  with  suppressed  sobs.  Far  worse  than  the 
physical  discomfort  of  sea-sickness  was  the  intensity  of 
her  mental  agony,  the  bitterness  of  her  unavailing 
regrets.  She  lay  motionless  in  her  narrow  bunk,  gaz- 
ing up  at  the  ceiling  which  seemed  almost  to  rest  on 
her  face,  and  turned  over  in  her  memory  ceaselessly 
and  with  minute  detail  the  events  of  the  last  three 
days :  her  farewell  to  home  and  "  darling  "  Aldermas- 
ton ;  her  parting  with  mother  on  the  platform  at  Read- 
ing .  .  .  and  father  .  .  .  the  flying  journey  to  Lon- 
don, when  she  had  almost  forgotten  her  grief  in  the 
excitement  of  seeing  the  metropolis;  her  two  days' 

65 


66      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

stay  with  Aunt  Pardew,  who  with  her  husband  kept 
Pardew's  Family  Hotel  in  Great  Ormond  Street. 
Then :  the  sight-seeing,  the  shopping,  the  visit  to  the 
offices  of  the  East  African  Mission.  Here  she  had 
received  her  saloon  passage  ticket  in  the  Jeddah,  and 
twenty  pounds  in  bright  sovereigns  for  her  out-of- 
pocket  expenses  by  the  way.  The  Secretary  had 
spoken  to  her  so  kindly  and  earnestly  that  she  had  felt 
ashamed  of  her  indifference  to  the  real  work  of  con- 
verting black  people. 

The  Secretary,  however,  had  said  one  thing  that 
somehow  perturbed  her.  He  had  mentioned  that  a 
sweet-natured  young  woman  from  her  neighbourhood 
—  Sister  Jamblin  —  might  also  be  going  to  their  Mis- 
sion in  East  Africa  —  by  the  next  boat.  He  thought 
this  would  cheer  Lucy  up;  instead  of  which  it  annoyed 
her  greatly.  .  .  .  Then  came  the  early  rising  on  what 
seemed  like  her  execution  morning;  the  hasty  break- 
fast, interrupted  with  trickling  tears  and  nose-blowing 
on  Aunt  Pardew's  —  Aunt  Ellen's  —  part,  as  well  as 
hers.  .  .  .  Aunt  Ellen  was  so  like  darling  mother  — 
and  yet  —  it  wasn't  mother  —  ... 

And  the  long  rattle  through  dirty  and  dirtier  streets 
in  a  four-wheel  cab  with  the  rest  of  her  luggage  on  top. 
The  arrival  on  board  the  steamer  in  the  docks,  where 
everything  was  noisy,  hurried,  and  confused  with  prep- 
arations for  departure.  .  .  .  Only  this  morning! 
Only  some  twelve  hours  since  she  had  taken  leave  with 
despairing  hugs  of  Aunt  Ellen!  Why,  it  seemed  at 
least  a  month  ago.  And  only  three  days  since  she  had 
seen  her  mother!  .  .  . 

When  she  mentally  uttered  the  word  "  mother,"  she 
lost  control  over  herself  and  gave  vent  to  a  convulsive 
choking  sob.  .  .  . 

"  Would  you  oblige  me,"  exclaimed  a  peevish  voice 
from  the  berth  below,  "  by  calling  for  the  stewardess  to 
bring  you  a  basin  if  you  have  any  inclination  to  be  sick? 


THE  VOYAGE  OUT  67 

It  would  be  much  better  than  trying  to  keep  it  back 
and  making  those  disagreeable  clicking  noises  in  your 
throat.  Excuse  me  for  remarking  it,  but  it  is  really 
most  distressing,  and  it  fidgets  me  so  I  can  hardly  get 
to  sleep.  You  really  suffer  much  more  by  endeavour- 
ing to  repress  sea-sickness  than  by  giving  way  at  once 
and  having  it  over.  .  .  ."  This  the  speaker  added  be- 
cause she  had  just  given  way  herself  —  eruptively  — 
and  was  now  resting  from  her  labours.  Lucy  was  so 
startled  and  overawed  by  this  unexpected  interruption 
to  her  thoughts  that  she  made  no  answer ;  but  lay  quite 
silent  with  flushing  cheeks  and  beating  heart.  "  It 
must  be  the  tall,  thin  lady,"  she  thought  to  herself, 
"  I  didn't  remember  she  was  so  close." 

Then  her  thoughts  turned  to  her  fellow-passengers. 
As  far  as  she  had  ascertained,  there  were  only  nine 
besides  herself:  five  ladies,  two  Roman  Catholic  priests 
or  missionaries,  and  two  men,  one  of  whom  was  a 
Captain  Brentham  going  out  to  Unguja,  where  he  was 
to  be  Consul. 

So,  at  least,  she  had  heard  the  pink-cheeked  lady  say, 
rather  tossing  her  head  when  she  said  it.  Her  aunt 
had  timidly  accosted  two  of  the  ladies  before  leaving 
the  steamer.  She  had  asked  them  with  a  redundancy 
of  polite  phrases  to  take  Lucy  under  their  protection 
as  far  as  they  might  be  travelling  together.  One  of 
them  was  tall  and  thin,  with  a  large  bony  face  and  cold 
grey  eyes  —  a  little  suggestive  of  Mrs.  Baines  (Lucy 
thought)  ;  the  other  was  pretty,  though  the  expression 
of  her  face,  even  when  she  smiled  and  showed  all  her 
white  teeth,  was  somehow  rather  insincere.  But  she 
had  the  most  lovely  complexion  Lucy  had  ever  seen. 
It  was  perfect:  very  pink  in  the  middle  of  the  cheeks 
and  the  palest  blush  tint  over  the  rest  of  the  face  and 
neck.  Her  eyes  were  a  dark  blueish  grey,  with  very 
black  rims,  and  her  hair  a  rich  golden  brown.  Lucy 
was  so  much  fascinated  by  her  appearance  and  stared 


68      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

at  her  with  such  unconscious  persistence  while  her  aunt 
was  talking,  that  at  last  the  pink-cheeked  lady  encoun- 
tered her  steady  gaze  with  a  look  of  haughty  surprise 
which  caused  Lucy  to  lower  her  eyes. 

Neither  lady  responded  very  cordially  to  Mrs.  Par- 
dew's  deferential  request.  The  tall  thin  one  had  said 
she  was  only  going  as  far  as  Algiers,  but  asked  if 
Lucy  was  "  a  Church  person  "  because  the  East  African 
Mission,  she  had  heard,  was  run  by  Methodists.  The 
pretty  lady,  whose  attire  Lucy  was  again  scanning  with 
attention,  because  it  was  in  the  latest  fashion,  had 
looked  at  her  with  rather  more  interest  and  said : 
"  Going  out  to  marry  a  missionary?  Well,  I  can't  say 
I  envy  your  experiences.  It  must  be  a  wretched  life 
up-country,  from  all  I  hear.  We  shall  travel  together 
as  far  as  Unguja,  but  I  can't  offer  to  act  as  your 
chaperon.  It  is  very  likely  my  husband  may  marry 
you  when  you  get  there.  I  mean — "  (seeing  Lucy's 
look  of  dismay)  — "  he  is  the  '  marriage  '  officer  there 
at  present,  unless  Captain  Brentham  is  to  deprive  him 
of  that  privilege,  also  '' —  (here  she  had  given  a  bitter 
laugh).  ...  "If  you  feel  lonely  at  any  time  on  the 
voyage  you  may  come  and  chat  with  me  .  .  .  occa- 
sionally ;  though  I  can't  tell  you  very  much  about  Africa 
as  I  have  never  been  there  before." 

Slowly  the  night  wore  away.  Lucy  as  she  lay  awake 
stifled  her  regrets  by  vowing  that  when  the  steamer 
called  at  Plymouth  she  would  instantly  leave  it  and 
return  home  to  her  parents,  and  write  to  John  telling 
him  she  was  not  fitted  to  be  a  missionary's  wife.  He 
would  soon  get  over  his  disappointment  as  Ann  Jamblin 
was  going  out  by  the  next  steamer.  She  would  marry 
him  like  a  shot.  .  .  . 

In  the  small  hours  of  the  morning  the  sea  calmed 
down  and  the  ship  rolled  less.  The  passenger  who  had 
suffered  most  from  sea-sickness  —  a  poor  tired-looking 


THE  VOYAGE  OUT  69 

woman,  mother  of  too  many  children  —  ceased  to  retch 
and  groan  and  sank  into  exhausted  repose.  Even 
Lucy  at  last  wove  her  troubled  thoughts  into  dreams, 
but  just  as  she  had  dreamt  that  this  was  only  a  dream 
and  that  in  reality  she  was  embracing  her  mother  in  a 
transport  of  happiness,  she  awoke  with  tears  wet  on 
her  face  and  saw  the  cabin  lit  up  with  garish  daylight 
streaming  through  the  now  open  skylight.  A  fresh, 
exhilarating  breeze  was  sweeping  through  the  stuffy 
saloon  and  chasing  the  nasty  odour  of  sea-sickness. 
She  sat  up  in  her  bunk  and  gazed  blankly  round,  trying 
to  realize  the  difference  between  dreamland  and  reality. 

"  Would  ye  like  a  bath,  Miss?  "  said  the  stewardess, 
a  coarse-looking  but  kind-hearted  Irishwoman,  never 
quite  free  from  a  suspicion  of  spirit  drinking: 
"Would  ye  like  a  bath?  Becase  if  so,  ye'd  betther 
follow  Mrs.  Bazzard." 

"I  —  I  —  don't  know  .  .  .  well,  yes,  I  think  I 
will,"  replied  Lucy,  wondering  who  Mrs.  Bazzard  was 
.  .  .  didn't  the  name  come  into  John's  letters?  Just 
then  the  door  leading  out  of  the  saloon  towards  the 
bathroom  opened  and  presumably  Mrs.  Bazzard  en- 
tered the  Ladies'  quarters,  carrying  towels  and  robed 
in  a  white  lace-trimmed  peignoir,  and  with  her  hair 
roughly  piled  on  the  top  of  her  head  and  a  lank  fringe 
parted  to  either  side.  "  Why,  it  must  be  the  lady  with 
the  beautiful  complexion,"  Lucy  was  saying  to  herself, 
when  she  saw  on  nearer  approach  that  the  rosy  cheeks 
and  blush  tints  had  disappeared,  and  that  the  incomer, 
though  otherwise  resembling  her  acquaintance  of  yes- 
terday, yet  had  a  pale  face,  colourless  and  sad.  "  Poor 
thing !  "  thought  Lucy,  "  how  she  must  have  suffered 
last  night."  And  so  great  was  her  compassion  that  it 
overcame  her  shyness,  and  she  was  about  to  condole 
with  the  lady,  when  Mrs.  Bazzard  swept  by  her  ab- 
ruptly without  recognition. 

When  her   toilet   was  finished,    she   felt   ill-at-ease 


70     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

among  the  uncongenial  inmates  of  the  Ladies'  Saloon, 
and  they  directed  towards  her  at  times  a  look  of  hatred 
as  at  one  who  was  prying  into  the  mysteries  of  their 
clothing  and  bedizenment;  so  acting  on  the  advice  of 
the  stewardess  "  to  get  up  a  bit  of  appetite,"  she  stag- 
gered along  the  corridor  and  climbed  the  slippery 
brass-bound  stairway  till  she  reached  the  upper-deck. 
Here  she  sank  on  to  the  nearest  seat  and  derived  her 
first  pleasurable  sensation  on  board  the  steamer  from 
inhaling  the  sea-scented  breeze  in  the  sunshine  of 
April.  It  was  indeed  a  fine  morning,  one  of  the  first 
emphatic  days  of  spring.  The  sky  was  a  pale  azure  in 
the  zenith  and  along  the  northern  horizon  a  thin  film 
of  pinkish  mist  veiled  the  distant  line  of  coast.  A  man 
cleaning  the  brasswork  told  Lucy  they  were  passing 
the  Isle  of  Wight;  yonder  was  Bournemouth  and 
presently  she  would  see  Portland  Bill  looming  up. 

A  tall  man,  smoking  a  cheroot,  was  gazing  in  the 
direction  of  Portland  Bill.  Presently  he  turned  round 
in  Lucy's  direction,  looked  at  her  rather  hard,  then  be- 
gan pacing  the  deck.  "  That,"  she  reflected,  "  must  be 
Captain  Brentham,  who  lectured  at  Reading  on  that 
snow  mountain.  .  .  .  How  extraordinary!  And  he 
must  be  the  man  Mrs.  .  .  .  Mrs.  .  .  .  Bazzard  said 
was  to  marry  me  to  John  when  I  arrived."  She 
raised  her  eyes  and  they  met  his.  On  his  next  turn  in 
walking  the  deck  he  paused  irresolute,  then  raising  his 
cap  said :  "  Are  you  the  young  lady  from  my  part  of 
the  country  who  is  going  out  to  Unguja  to  be  mar- 
ried? The  Captain  told  me  about  you  —  unless  I 
have  made  some  mistake  and  ought  to  be  addressing 
another  lady." 

"  I  think  it  must  be  me,"  said  Lucy.  "I  ...  I've 
heard  you  lecture  once  at  Reading.  You're  a  friend 
of  Lord  Silchester's,  aren't  you?  My  father  is  one  of 
his  tenants.  We  live  at  Aldermaston."  Her  voice 


THE  VOYAGE  OUT  71 

trembled  a  little  in  pronouncing  the  name  of  the  place 
she  now  loved  —  too  late  —  beyond  any  other. 

"  Aldermaston  —  of  course  I  know  it,  known  it  from 
boyhood.  I  rode  over  there  several  times  last  year  to 
see  my  cousins,  the  Grayburns.  One  of  them  married 
Lord  Silchester  last  July,  and  that's  why  I  stayed  at 
Englefield  and  gave  the  Reading  lecture.  ...  So  you 
came  and  heard  it?  " 

"  I  did ;  because,  as  I  was  going  out  to  marry  a 
missionary,  I  thought  I  ought  to  learn  something  about 
East  Africa.  Your  .  .  .  your  lecture  made  me  want 
to  go  —  awfully.  .  .  .  That  wonderful  mountain, 
those  clumps  of  palms,  the  river  and  the  hippopotami 
—  or  was  it  a  lake?  " 

"  Well,  you'll  see  lots  of  such  things  if  you  are 
going  up-country.  Whom  are  you  going  to  marry  and 
where  is  he  stationed?  " 

"  Mr.  John  Baines,  the  East  African  Mission, 
Ulunga.  .  .  ." 

"Oh"  (rather  depreciatively),  "Nonconformist, 
Plymouth  Brethren,  or  something  of  the  kind.  Now 
I  think  of  it  I  went  to  a  big  meeting  of  theirs  last  year 
soon  as  I  came  back.  Yes,  /  remember.  They're  a 
trading  and  industrial  mission  some  distance  inland, 
in  the  British  as  well  as  the  German  sphere  .  .  .  good 
sort  of  folk,  though  their  mouths  are  full  of  texts  .  .  . 
but  they  took  me  in  once  when  I  was  half  dead  with 
fever  and  nursed  me  back  to  health.  And  I  liked  the 
way  they  set  to  work  to  make  the  best  of  the  country 
and  the  people.  .  .  .  But  it  will  be  awfully  rough  for 
you;  you  don't  look  cut  out  for  what  they  have  to 
go  through.  I  should  have  thought  the  Anglican  Mis- 
sion more  your  style,  if,  indeed,  you  went  out  as  a 
Missionary  at  all." 

He  wished  to  add,  "  You're  much  too  pretty,"  but 
restrained  himself.  Just  then  the  breakfast  gong 


72     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

sounded  and  they  went  down  to  the  Dining  Saloon. 
Brentham  rather  masterfully  strode  to  near  the  top 
of  the  long  table  as  though  knowing  he  was  the  most 
important  person  on  board,  and  placed  himself  next 
but  one  to  the  Captain's  seat  and  Lucy  on  his  right, 
with  a  wink  at  the  same  time  to  the  Chief  Steward  as 
though  to  say  "  Fix  this  arrangement." 

A  moment  after  another  lady  with  gold  hair  and  a 
dazzling  complexion  glided  up  and  nimbly  took  the 
seat  on  Brentham's  left  hand.  The  Captain  was  absent 
and  intimated  that  they  needn't  expect  him  till  the 
Jeddah  was  away  from  Plymouth  and  out  of  the 
Channel.  The  other  lady  passengers  were  breakfast- 
ing in  the  Ladies'  Saloon.  As  soon  as  they  were 
seated  and  porridge  was  being  offered,  the  lady  on 
Brentham's  left  introduced  herself  as  the  wife  of  a 
colleague :  "  My  husband  is  Spencer  Bazzard,  the 
Vice-Consul  at  Unguja  —  I  dare  say  you've  heard 
about  him  at  the  F.O.  ?  He's  a  friend  of  that  dear 
Bennet  Molyneux's,  to  whom  we're  both  devoted. 
.  .  .  Such  a  grasp  of  African  affairs,  don't  you  think 
so?  My  husband  already  knows  Unguja  through  and 
through.  I'm  sure  he'll  be  glad  to  put  you  up  to  the 
ropes.  I've  never  been  there  before.  Spencer  thought 
he  ought  to  go  out  first  and  make  a  home  for  me,  so 
I've  been  a  forlorn  grass  widow  for  over  a  year. 
However,  we  shall  soon  be  reunited.  And  I  under- 
stand we're  to  look  on  you  as  our  chief  till  the  Consul- 
General  returns.  Spencer's  been  Sir  James's  right- 
hand  man.  Thank  you.  Toast,  please.  No,  I 
won't  take  butter:  it  looks  so  odd.  Like  honey! 
Ugh!" 

After  breakfast,  Brentham  escorted  Lucy  to  the 
upper-deck,  got  her  a  folding  chair  and  secured  it  in  a 
sheltered  corner,  made  her  comfortable,  lent  her  a 
novel  and  a  rug,  and  then  resumed  his  pacing  of  the 
deck  or  occasional  study  of  a  language  book  —  he  was 


THE  VOYAGE  OUT  73 

trying,  he  told  Lucy,  to  master  Swahili  by  doing 
Steere's  exercises  in  that  harmonious  tongue.  Mrs. 
Bazzard  commandeered  a  steward  and  a  deck-chair 
and  established  herself  close  to  Lucy  with  a  piece  of 
showy  embroidery,  bought  at  Liberty's  with  half  the 
embroidery  done.  In  a  condescending  manner  she  set 
herself  to  pump  Lucy  about  Brentham.  .  .  .  Did  she 
know  him  well?  Didn't  she  think  him  good-looking? 
Mrs.  Bazzard  thought  of  the  two  her  husband  was  the 
finer-looking  man.  He  had  longer  moustaches  and 
they  were  a  golden  brown,  like  Mrs.  Bazzard's  hair; 
he  wasn't  perhaps  quite  so  tall ;  but  how  she  was  look- 
ing forward  to  reunion  with  him.  He  was  a  paragon 
of  husbands,  one  of  the  Norfolk  Bazzards.  His  elder 
brother,  a  person  of  great  legal  acumen,  had  from 
time  to  time  tendered  advice  of  signal  value  to  Mr. 
Bennet  Molyneux.  ...  It  was  thus  they  had  got  "  in  " 
with  the  Foreign  Office,  and  if  Mrs.  Bazzard  were  not 
pledged  to  inviolable  secrecy  (because  of  Spencer's 
career)  there  were  things  she  knew  and  things  she 
could  tell  about  Lord  Wiltshire's  intentions  regarding 
Africa  —  and  Spencer.  .  .  .  However.  .  .  .  Did  Miss 
—  she  begged  pardon  —  she  had  not  caught  Lucy's 
name.  .  .  .  Josselin?  any  connexion  of  Sir  Martin 
Josselin?  Oh,  Josling.  .  .  .  Did  Miss  Josling  come 
from  Captain  Brentham's  part  of  the  country?  Not  a 
relation?  No,  of  course  not.  .  .  .  Well,  did  she  think 
him  clever  ?  Some  —  in  the  Foreign  Office  —  re- 
garded him  as  superficial.  It  was  his  good  looks  that 
had  got  him  on,  and  the  friendship  of  a  great  lady 
.  .  .  but  then  what  scandal-mongers  men  were !  And 
how  jealous  of  one  another!  Mrs.  Bazzard's  husband 
had  got  his  commission  through  sheer,  outstanding 
ability,  yet  at  the  time  people  said  the  most  horrid 
things,  both  of  him  and  her.  .  .  .  But  Lord  Wiltshire 
had  remained  unshaken,  knowing  Spencer's  value;  and 
undoubtedly  held  him  in  view  for  a  very  important 


74     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

post  in  Africa  as  soon  as  he  should  have  inducted  Cap- 
tain Brentham  into  his  duties. 

Lunch  came  in  due  course  and  was  eaten  in  better 
appetite  by  most  of  the  passengers.  It  was  served 
with  coarse  plenty,  on  a  lower-middle-class  standard 
of  selection  and  cuisine. 

It  was  a  sunny  afternoon  when  the  Jeddah  anchored 
in  Plymouth  harbour.  The  passengers  were  informed 
they  might  spend  four  hours  on  shore,  so  Captain 
Brentham  proposed  to  Lucy  and  to  Mrs.  Bazzard  that 
he  should  take  them  under  his  escort  and  give  them 
their  last  chance  of  eating  a  decent  dinner  at  an  English 
hotel.  Mrs.  Bazzard  accepted  with  a  gush  of  thanks 
and  a  determination  to  commence  a  discreet  flirtation 
with  the  acting  Consul-General,  who  was  undoubtedly 
a  handsome  man.  Lucy  assented  simply  to  the  propo- 
sition. She  was  still  a  little  dazed  in  the  dawn  of  her 
new  life.  But  as  she  went  off  with  the  others  in  the 
tug  she  put  aside  as  an  unreasonable  absurdity  any 
idea  of  flight  to  the  railway  station  and  a  return  home. 
It  was  a  great  stay  to  her  home-sickness  that  there 
should  be  on  board  some  one  she  knew  who  almost 
shared  her  home  country,  who  had  actually  met  people 
she  had  met,  and  who  would  carry  this  home  knowl- 
edge out  with  him  to  the  same  region  in  Africa  as  that 
she  was  going  to.  This  removed  the  sting  of  her  re- 
gret and  remedied  her  sense  of  utter  friendlessness  in 
the  wilds.  Was  he  not  actually  to  be  her  Consul  ? 

These  reflections  caused  her  to  sit  down  in  the  Hotel 
Writing  Room,  whilst  dinner  was  being  got  ready,  and 
Mrs.  Bazzard  was  titivating,  and  dash  off  a  hasty 
letter  to  "  dearest  mother "  informing  her  of  the 
brighter  outlook.  Her  mqther,  overjoyed  at  this  silver 
lining  to  the  cloud  of  bereavement,  spread  the  news; 
and  so  it  reached  Englefield,  where  Lord  Silchester 
was  spending  the  Easter  recess.  He  retailed  it  to 
Sibyl  .  .  .  who  stamped  her  foot  on  the  library  car- 


THE  VOYAGE  OUT  75 

pet  and  said:     "There!     Didn't  I  predict  it?     I  said 
he'd  fall  in  love  with  a  missionaryess !  " 

"  And  why  not,  my  love?  "  replied  Lord  Silchester. 
"What  if  he  does?" 

A  little  tossing  on  the  Bay  of  Biscay  sent  Mrs.  Baz- 
zard  to  her  cabin,  and  made  more  scanty  the  public 
attendance   at  meals.     But   Lucy  proved  as   good   a 
sailor  as  Brentham,  and  a  great  solace  to  him.     For 
he  had  his  unacknowledged  home-sickness  too.     You 
could  not  spend  nine  months  in  the  best  of  English 
country  life  and  the  most  interesting  aspects  of  Lon- 
don without  a  revulsion  of  feeling  when  you   found 
yourself  cut  off  from  all  communication  with  those 
scenes  of  beauty,  splendour  and  absolute  comfort,  and 
before  high  ambition  had  been  once  more  aroused,  and 
the  unexplored  wilderness  had  again  beckoned  her  fu- 
ture   ravisher.     Lucy    might    be    merely    a    farmer's 
daughter,   a  little   better  educated   than   such  usually 
were  at  that  period,  still  an  unsophisticated  country 
chit  (as  Mrs.  Bazzard  had  already  summed  her  up  to 
the  tall  thin  lady)  ;  yet  she  could  talk  with  some  slight 
knowledge   about   the    Silchesters  —  her    mother   had 
been  maid  to  Lord  Silchester's  mother,  and  her  father 
was  Lord  Silchester's  tenant.     Colonel  Grayburn  was 
—  or  tried  to  be  —  a  gentleman  farmer  within  a  mile 
of  Lucy's  home;  she  had  seen  Sibyl  occasionally  dur- 
ing the  three  years  in  which  the  Grayburns  had  lived 
in  Aldermaston  parish.     Lucy  had  never  been  so  far 
afield   as   Farleigh   Wallop,   but   she   knew    Reading, 
Mortimer,   Silchester,  Tadley,  and  even  Basingstoke. 
Merely  to  mention  names  like  these  consoled  them  both 
as  the  steamer   ploughed   her  twelve  knots   an   hour 
through  the  "  roaring  forties." 

And  when  the  Jeddah  turned  into  the  Mediterranean, 
with  a  passing  view  of  the  Rock  of  Gibraltar,  and 
entered  upon  calm  seas,  blue  and  dazzling,  their 
camaraderie  increased  under  Mrs.  Bazzard's  baleful 


;6     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

gaze  and  interchange  of  eyebrow-raisings  with  the  thin 
bony-nosed  lady  of  Lucy's  cabin. 

The  Jeddah  anchored  off  Algiers.  The  thin  lady, 
who  here  passes  out  of  the  story —  I  think  she  was  the 
wife  of  a  British  Chaplain  —  had  invited  Mrs.  Baz- 
zard  to  lunch  with  her  on  shore.  Mrs.  Bazzard  had 
hastened  to  accept  the  invitation,  the  more  willingly 
since  Captain  Brentham  seemed  to  have  forgotten  her 
existence ;  except  at  meal  times,  when  he  was  obliged 
to  pass  the  mustard  and  the  sugar.  Brentham  and 
Lucy  went  off  together  into  the  picturesque  white  city, 
rising  high  into  the  half-circle  of  the  hills.  They 
lunched  at  the  Cafe  des  Anglais  and  dined  at  an  hotel 
near  the  quay.  They  climbed  the  ladder-like  streets 
of  the  Arab  quarter,  bought  useless  trifles,  and  had 
a  drive  out  into  the  country  which  was  gay  with 
genista  in  full  bloom,  with  red-purple  irises  and  roses, 
and  dignified  by  its  hoary  olives,  sombre  cypresses  and 
rigid  palms. 

If  Lucy  had  never  been  so  miserable  as  she  was  nine 
days  previously,  she  had  probably  never  felt  so  happy 
as  now.  Certainly  she  had  never  looked  so  pretty. 
Her  violet  eyes  had  a  depth  of  colour  new  to  them; 
her  brown  hair  a  lustre  and  a  tendency  to  curl  in  the 
little  strands  and  wisps  that  escaped  control  about  her 
forehead.  Her  cheeks,  ordinarily  pale,  and  her  milk- 
white  complexion  generally  were  suffused  with  a  wild 
rose  flush  and  a  warmth  of  tint  caused  by  the  quick- 
ened circulation.  The  sea  air  and  the  sunshine  chased 
away  the  languor  that  had  accompanied  a  sedentary 
life.  She  had  not  been  unobservant,  and  had  taken 
several  hints  in  costume  from  Mrs.  Bazzard's  dress. 
She  had  tightened  this,  expanded  that,  cut  short  skirts 
that  might  have  flopped,  diminished  a  bustle,  inserted 
a  frill,  and  adapted  herself  to  the  warmth  of  the  trop- 
ics without  losing  grace  of  outline  or  donning  head- 
gear of  repellent  aspect. 


THE  VOYAGE  OUT  77 

At  Port  Said  he  already  called  her  "  Lucy,"  and  she 
saw  nothing  in  it  that  she  mightn't  accept,  a  permis- 
sible brotherliness  due  to  country  associations  and  the 
position  of  guardian,  protector  that  he  had  assumed. 
He  showed  her  those  sights  of  Port  Said  that  need  not 
shock  a  modest  girl.  They  sat  side  by  side  to  enjoy 
the  thrill  with  which  the  unsophisticated  then  passed 
through  the  Suez  Canal.  One  woman  passenger  had 
left  the  ship  at  Port  Said;  another  at  Suez.  There 
only  remained  the  third  one  —  the  mother  of  many 
babies  —  changing  at  Aden  into  a  Bombay  boat  — 
besides  Mrs.  Bazzard  and  herself  in  the  Ladies'  Saloon. 
The  two  missionary  priests  told  their  breviaries,  gave 
at  times  a  pleasant  smile  to  her  pretty  face,  and  con- 
cerned themselves  no  more  with  her  affairs  than  if 
she  had  been  an  uncriticizable  member  of  the  crew. 
They  were  Belgians  going  out  for  a  life's  work  to 
Tanganyika,  and  to  them  the  Protestant  English  and 
their  ways  were  unaccountable  by  ordinary  human 
standards.  The  captain  of  the  ship  had  known  Cap- 
tain Brentham  in  the  Persian  Gulf  and  had  the  utmost 
confidence  in  his  uprightness.  What  more  reasonable 
to  suppose  than  that  this  girl  had  been  placed  under 
his  charge,  inasmuch  as  it  was  he  who  would  be  the 
official  to  register  her  marriage  when  she  met  her  mis- 
sionary betrothed  at  Unguja? 

Nor  had  Brentham  any  but  the  most  honourable 
intentions.  He  felt  tenderly  and  pitifully  towards 
Lucy,  carrying  her  country  prettiness  and  innocency 
into  savage  Africa,  embarking  on  a  life  of  unexpected 
frightfulness,  unspeakable  weariness,  of  monotony, 
varied  by  shocks  of  terror,  by  sights  of  bloodshed  and 
obscenity  that  might  thrill  or  titillate  a  strong  man,  but 
must  inevitably  take  the  bloom  off  a  woman's  mind. 
He  even  thought,  once  or  twice,  of  dissuading  her  from 
completing  the  contract,  yet  shrank  from  the  upset 
this  would  entail.  Perhaps  she  really  liked  this  mis- 


;8     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

sionary  chap  ?  From  the  description  she  gave  he  didn't 
seem  so  bad  —  he  was  tall  and  strong  and  seemingly 
a  man  of  his  hands,  with  a  turn  for  carpentry,  and 
was  the  Agent  of  a  very  practical  Mission.  If  she 
recoiled  from  this  marriage,  what  was  she  going  to 
do?  It  was  impossible  to  think  of  her  remaining  at 
Unguja  "on  her  own,"  and  if  he  sent  her  back  to 
England  at  his  own  expense  her  parents  might  resent 
very  strongly  his  interference.  There  was  his  own 
career  to  be  thought  of  ...  and  Sibyl.  ...  To  a 
woman  like  Lucy  a  marriage  with  most  men  of  her 
class,  or  below  it,  or  immediately  above  it,  would  come 
with  rather  a  shock.  She  was  so  marriageable,  so 
marked  out  as  a  man's  prey  that  she  was  bound  to 
go  through  it  some  day.  Then,  when  she  was  mar- 
ried, she  would  live  more  or  less  in  his  Consular  dis- 
trict, and  he  could  keep  an  eye  on  her  without  being 
unduly  attentive.  Perhaps  Mrs.  Ewart  Stott  was  still 
settled  in  the  Zigula  country  of  the  German  sphere 
.  .  .  she  might  help  her.  Very  likely  she  would  be 
able  to  stick  her  three  years  of  residence  which  the 
Mission  generally  stipulated  for  and  then  return  to 
England. —  What  a  lark  if  they  both  went  home  to- 
gether and  compared  experiences  ? 

He  might  have  revolutionized  East  African  affairs 
in  that  space  of  time.  .  .  . 

He  was  quite  unconscious  that  in  the  two-to-three 
weeks  of  their  close  association  on  board  he  had  won 
Lucy's  love  to  such  an  extent  that  she  was  growing 
slowly  to  look  upon  the  end  of  the  voyage  and  the 
meeting  with  John  as  a  point  of  blackness,  the  en- 
trance to  a  dark  tunnel.  .  .  . 

Meantime,  without  assuming  a  forwardness  of  de- 
meanour which  her  upbringing  discountenanced  and 
the  watchfulness  of  Mrs.  Bazzard  forbade,  she  ac- 
cepted all  he  gave  her  voluntarily  of  his  society.  The 
Red  Sea  was  kind  to  them  at  the  end  of  April:  clear 


THE  VOYAGE  OUT  79 

cobalt  skies,  purple  waves,  a  cool  breeze  against  them, 
no  steamy  mist  in  the  atmosphere,  and  occasional  views 
of  gaunt  mountains  or  bird-whitened  rocks  and  islands. 
They  sat  in  their  chairs  and  talked:  talked  of  every- 
thing that  came  into  Lucy's  mind.  She  put  to  his 
superior  wisdom  a  hundred  enigmas  to  answer,  which 
her  mind  was  now  able  to  formulate  with  an  aroused 
imagination. 

"  You  say  you  approve  of  missionaries,  yet  you  seem 
to  dislike  religion;  you  tried  to  get  out  of  attending 
the  Sunday  service  in  the  Saloon,  and  you  looked  very 
angry  when  the  Captain  asked  you  to  read  the  Les- 
sons. Don't  you  believe  in  anything  then?" 

"  You'll  find,  Lucy  " —  Brentham  would  reply  — 
"  that  the  word  '  believe  '  is  very  much  abused.  You 
may  '  think  '  of  such  and  such  a  thing  as  probable,  as 
possible,  as  desirable  —  often,  indeed,  the  wish  is  father 
to  the  thought.  But  to  imagine  it,  is  not  to  believe  in 
it;  in  the  same  way  in  which  we  are  compelled  by 
irresistible  conviction  to  believe  in  some  fact  or  conse- 
quence or  event,  whether  we  like  it  or  not.  We  can 
only  '  believe  '  what  can  be  tested  by  the  evidence  of 
our  senses,  by  some  incontestable  piling  up  of  evidence 
or  record  of  historical  facts.  .  .  .  Beyond  that  there 
are  probabilities  and  possibilities  and  suppositions.  I 
can  believe  the  fire  would  burn  my  finger  if  I  put  it  in 
the  flame ;  or  that  the  earth  goes  round  the  sun  and 
that  the  moon  is  more  or  less  240,000  miles  away  from 
the  earth :  because  my  senses  or  my  reason  convince 
me  of  the  truth  of  these  facts.  I  can  believe  that 
you're  a  very  dear  little  girl  seated  next  me  in  a  deck- 
chair  on  a  steamer  going  out  to  East  Africa :  because 
I  can  put  such  a  belief  to  some  conclusive  test  of  the 
senses.  But  I  can't  in  the  same  way  '  believe  '  in  most 
of  what  are  called  '  religious  truths,'  because  they  are 
only  suppositions,  guesses,  tentative  explanations  which 
have  lost  their  value  .  .  .  indeed,  have  lost  their  in- 


8o     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

terest.     I  can't  therefore  waste  my  time  on  such " 

"But,"  Lucy  stammered,  "the  Bible?" 
"  Just  so :  the  Bible.  How  many  of  you  stop  to 
think  what  the  Bible  is?  A  collection  of  compara- 
tively ancient  writings  in  Hebrew  and  in  Greek,  very 
beautifully  translated  into  Shakespeare's  English,  with 
lots  of  gaps  filled  up  by  suggested  words  and  even  — 
as  we  now  think  —  lots  of  words  and  phrases  wrongly 
translated.  The  Hebrew  books  may  have  first  been 
written  down  at  any  time  between  six  hundred  and 
one  hundred  years  B.  c. ;  and  the  New  Testament  be- 
tween fifty  and  a  hundred-and-fifty  years  after  Christ 
-  at  any  rate  in  the  form  in  which  we  know  them. 
The  original  texts  were  uttered  or  written  by  men  who 
only  knew  a  small  part  of  the  Mediterranean  world, 
wrho  thought  the  earth  was  flat  and  the  rest  of  the 
Universe  only  an  arched  dome  over  the  earth.  Job 
may  have  had  grander  conceptions,  but  the  early  Chris- 
tian writers  were  ignorance  embodied.  They  were 
ready  to  believe  anything  and  everything  to  be  a  mira- 
cle, and  to  invent  the  most  preposterous  fairy  stories  to 
account  for  commonplace  facts.  At  the  same  time  they 
often  overlooked  the  beauty  and  simplicity  and  prac- 
tical value  of  Christ's  teaching  and  also  the  fact  that 
a  good  many  of  his  .  .  ." 

"  What  an  abstruse  conversation,"  said  Mrs.  Baz- 
zard,  breaking  in  out  of  the  star-lit  darkness  on  Roger's 
disquisitions.  She  hung  about  them  in  the  Red  Sea, 
especially  after  dark,  and  had  a  tiresome  way  of  sud- 
denly making  her  presence  known.  Perhaps,  however, 
it  was  just  as  well,  and,  indeed,  though  Roger  was 
annoyed  at  the  moment  at  having  his  eloquent  think- 
ing aloud  interrupted  —  because  in  such  monologues 
we  are  generally  trying  to  convince  ourselves  as  well 
as  our  auditory  —  he  also  felt  some  relief  at  the  ex- 
cuse for  dropping  the  argument.  IV hy  on  earth  should 
he  undermine  Lucy's  stereotyped  beliefs?  What  could 


THE  VOYAGE  OUT  81 

he  give  her  —  in  the  life  she  was  going  to  lead,  too  — 
in  place  of  them? 

But  the  discussion  was  revived  ever  and  again  by 
Lucy's  persistent  questions.  She  elicited  from  him  in 
general  that  although  he  approved  of  the  material  re- 
sults of  missionary  work  and  the  ethics  generally  of 
Christianity,  he  mocked  at  creeds,  thought  prayer  fu- 
tile—  especially  the  fossilized  prayers  of  Judaism, 
Protestant  and  Catholic  Christianity,  because  they 
were  inapposite  to  our  present  age,  bore  little  relation 
to  our  complicated  sorrows  and  needs,  our  new  crimes, 
difficulties,  agonies,  and  temptations.  He  found  the 
Psalms,  all  but  two  or  three,  utterly  wearisome  in  their 
tedious  woes  and  wailings,  aches  and  pains  probably 
due  to  too  carnivorous  a  dietary;  untempting  in  their 
ideals  — "  more  bullocks  for  the  altar  .  .  .  and  the  fat 
of  rams.  .  .  ."  Then  our  hymns  —  all  but  three  or 
four  —  were  gross  or  childish  in  their  imagery,  abject 
in  their  attitude  to  a  Caesar  or  a  Sultan  of  a  God,  who 
all  the  time  watched  inflexibly  the  Martyrdom  of  Man 
and  the  ruthless  processes  of  Nature  without  lifting 
a  finger  to  stay  the  cyclone  or  the  epidemic  .  .  .  and 
so  on.  ...  His  views  were  very  much  modelled  on 
those  of  Winwood  Reade  and  on  Burton's  gibes  at 
"  Provvy  "  (Lucy  shuddered  at  the  irreverence  and 
expected  a  meteor  to  cleave  the  ship  in  two),  and  he 
had  brought  out  with  him  from  England  Cotter  Mor- 
rison's "  Service  of  Man." 

Lucy  sometimes  felt  so  shocked  at  his  negations  that 
she  resolved  to  speak  with  him  no  more,  but  to  apply 
herself  to  the  study  of  the  Swahili  Grammar  he  had 
lent  her.  Then  at  the  sight  of  him  and  at  his  morn- 
ing greeting  and  the  kindly  companionship  at  meals, 
she  could  not  remain  aloof.  At  any  rate,  he  had  said 
that  you  ought  to  act  as  a  Christian  even  if  you  could 
not  swallow  Christian  theology.  That  was  a  great  ad- 
mission. And  he  seemed  to  have  numerous  friends 


82     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

among  the  missionaries  at  Unguja  and  in  the  interior, 
which  would  hardly  be  the  case  if  he  were  a  bad  man. 
.  .  .  Besides,  his  father  was  a  clergyman. 

Aden  came  as  a  welcome  surcease  to  these  discus- 
sions. It  was  concrete  and  indisputable,  and  of  re- 
markable interest  when  interpreted  by  a  Brentham. 
.  .  .  Steamer  Point  with  its  crowds  of  Indian  and 
British  soldiers,  Jews  with  ringlets  and  tall  caps  selling 
ostrich  plumes,  Somalis  like  Greek  gods  in  ebony  offer- 
ing strange  skins,  skulls,  and  horns  for  sale,  and  ostrich 
eggs;  the  drive  —  in  a  jingling  carriage  over  sandy 
roads,  past  red-black  crags  on  one  side,  with  an  in- 
tensely ultramarine  sea  on  the  other  —  to  the  Arab 
town;  the  vast  cisterns,  the  rich  vegetation  at  the  cis- 
terns; and  then,  after  an  interval  of  absolutely  sterile 
rock-gorges  (vaguely  suggestive  of  the  approach  to 
Aladdin's  cave  in  the  Arabian  Nights),  a  sea-side  ra- 
vine with  an  unexpected  flora  of  aloes,  euphorbias, 
mesembryanths,  and  acacias.  .  .  .  Even  Mrs.  Bazzard, 
with  her  Bayswater  mind,  was  momentarily  impressed 
by  Brentham's  pleasantly  imparted  knowledge  of  all 
these  things.  You  never  noticed  how  extraordinary 
they  were  until  he  pointed  it  out.  She  was  for  the 
time  being  conciliated  by  his  having  invited  her  to 
accompany  Lucy  on  the  day's  excursion  and  by  the 
generous  way  in  which  he  stood  treat  and  presented 
her,  as  well  as  Lucy,  with  ostrich  feather  fans  and 
amusing  gewgaws  made  from  sea-shells. 

After  Aden  the  sky  clouded;  metaphorically,  with 
the  coming  end  of  this  wonderful  episode  in  Lucy's 
life,  materially  with  some  tiresome  manifestations  of 
the  monsoon.  I  forget  whether  it  blew  behind  and 
left  the  Jcddah  wallowing  in  the  trough  of  great  indigo 
waves  and  rolling  drearily;  or  blew  against  her  prog- 
ress, causing  her  to  progress  like  a  rocking-horse.  But 
it  imparted  a  storminess,  a  sense  of  exasperated  emo- 
tion to  this  pair  of  lovers  —  as  they  were,  unadmittedly. 


THE  VOYAGE  OUT  83 

Fortunately,  it  also  made  the  footing  of  Mrs.  Bazzard's 
high-heeled  Bayswater  shoes  uncertain  on  the  unstable 
deck,  so  she  relaxed  her  watchful  spying  on  their  con- 
versations. Lucy  was  alternately  silent  and  wistful, 
and  almost  noisily  vivacious,  with  hands  that  shook 
as  they  passed  a  tea-cup.  She  had  begun  to  realize 
that  in  five  or  six  more  days  the  voyage  would  end 
in  her  meeting  John  as  an  ardent  bridegroom;  that 
she  would  never  belong  to  Roger,  she  would  pass  out 
of  his  life  as  swiftly  as  she  had  entered  it,  be  at  most 
a  pleasant  and  amusing  memory  of  a  half-ignorant 
little  person  with  whom  he  had  spent  good-naturedly 
much  of  his  time  on  a  long  sea  voyage. 

Roger,  on  his  part,  in  smoking-room  reflections, 
would  feel  he  had  gone  much  too  far  —  compromised 
her,  perhaps,  played  a  rather  foolish  part  himself,  for 
a  man  with  high  ambitions.  There  was  that  bitch  of 
a  woman,  that  quintessence  of  a  Bayswater  boarding- 
house,  Mrs.  Bazzard,  wife  of  a  —  rotter,  probably  — 
whose  nose  he  had  put  out  of  joint.  She  was  capable 
—  and  to  conciliate  her  and  win  her  over  would  be 
degrading  —  of  putting  any  construction  on  his  flirta- 
tion. How,  at  such  times,  before  turning  in,  or  even 
while  playing  whist  in  the  Captain's  cabin  and  thinking 
of  anything  but  the  game,  he  would  curse  these  long 
steamer  voyages  and  these  episodes  of  love!  There 
was  that  voyage  out  in  1880  —  he  had  narrowly  missed 
a  breach  of  promise  action  then,  and  he  would  be 
hanged  if  he'd  set  out  to  be  more  than  sociable.  And 
the  last  time  he  had  returned  to  England.  .  .  .  Mrs. 
Traquhair,  the  wife  of  the  chief  electrician  at  Unguja. 
.  .  .  Only  the  fact  that  in  the  Mediterranean  she  had 
developed  one  of  those  Rose  Boils  which  were  a  legacy 
of  Unguja's  mosquitoes,  and  which  confined  her  to  her 
cabin  till  the  Bay  of  Biscay  (when  they  were  all  sea- 
sick), had  prevented  the  irrevocable.  And  all  the  time 
he  believed  himself  engaged  to  Sibyl!  And  after- 


84     THE  MAX  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

wards,  when  he  had  met  Mrs.  Traquhair  and  her  sis- 
ter—  and  the  sister!  Oh  my  God, —  in  London  and 
had  dined  them  at  the  "  Cri/'  and  taken  them  to  see 
Arthur  Roberts  from  a  box,  and  had  scanned  Mrs. 
T.'s  profile  as  he  had  never  done  before  and  watched 
her  laugh  at  the  comedian,  showing  all  the  gold  in  her 
teeth  ...  he  asked  himself  how  on  earth  he  could 
have  kissed  her  so  passionately  as  they  were  passing 
through  the  Suez  Canal.  Yet  she  couldn't  have  been 
a  bad  sort  because  she  had  never  attempted  to  bother 
him  or  follow  it  up.  .  .  .  But  he  couldn't  class  Lucy 
with  Mrs.  Traquhair  or  the  siren  of  the  1880  voyage. 
She  was  utterly  good  and  innocent  of  schemes  to  en- 
trap him.  A  sweet  little  thing.  .  .  . 

As  they  passed  into  the  Indian  Ocean  between 
Guardafui  and  Sokotra,  there  was  a  temporary  lull  in 
the  wind.  It  was  a  moonlight  night;  they  were  sit- 
ting side  by  side  under  the  open  sky,  for  the  deck- 
awning  had  been  removed  on  account  of  the  monsoon. 
A  sudden  fierce  longing  —  there  was  no  one  on  deck 
that  he  could  see  —  seized  him  to  take  her  in  his  arms 
and  kiss  her.  And  there  came  a  telepathic  message 
that  she  was  aching  to  be  so  taken  and  kissed.  But 
he  resisted  the  impetus,  with  clenched  hands  on  the 
arms  of  his  chair.  Silence  had  set  in  between  them. 
A  catch  of  Lucy's  breath  was  faintly  audible,  and  — 
dare  I  say  it  ?  A  snivel,  a  tiny  snivel.  .  .  . 

"Lucy?  Crying?  My  dear  child!  Why  .  .  . 
cheer  up.  We  shall  soon  be  there.  .  .  .  You're  not 
cold?" 

"  You  don't  understand.  ...  I  ...  I  ...  don't 
want  to  get  there.  ...  I  don't  want  to  marry  him; 
I  hate  the  very  idea.  .  .  ." 

"  Oh,  but  this  will  never  do.  ...  This  is  foolish- 
ness, believe  me.  Lucy!  Pull  yourself  together." 

Lucy  now  sobbed  frantically. 

Mrs.  Bazzard  was  heard  saying  from  quite  close  by, 


THE  VOYAGE  OUT  85 

"  Which  is  Gyuardifwee  and  which  is  what-you-may- 
call-'em  —  Ras  Hafoon?  I  mean,  the  cape  where 
some  of  the  steamers  run  ashore  in  the  mist,  and  then 
you  have  to  walk  through  Somaliland  and  get  sun- 
stroke?" 

Brentham  exclaimed  under  his  breath :  "  Damn  that 
woman!  "  and  audibly,  even  a  little  insolently  replied: 
"  I'm  blessed  if  I  know.  You'd  better  ask  the  Cap- 
tain. He's  on  the  bridge  and  dying  for  a  gossip,  and 
he'll  probably  give  you  a  cup  of  cocoa." 

Mrs.  Bazzard  walked  away  —  or  pretended  to  do  so. 

"  Lucy  dear.  I  want  to  speak  to  you  while  that  cat 
has  gone  out  of  ear-shot.  Calm  yourself  and  listen, 
because  I  must  speak  in  a  low  tone.  If  you  feel  you 
would  sooner  die  than  go  through  with  this  marriage, 
you  shan't  be  forced  into  it.  I  will  speak  to  Arch- 
deacon 'Gravening  ...  or  the  Bishop  .  .  .  and  they 
will  know  of  some  nice  women  of  the  Anglican  Mis- 
sion who  would  take  you  in  for  a  few  weeks  .  .  .  till 
there  is  a  return  steamer.  .  .  .  Then  on  the  plea  of 
'  health '  you  can  go  back  to  England.  I  could  easily 
advance  the  money  for  the  steamer  passage  .  .  .  some 
day  your  parents  could  repay  me.  But  even  if  they 
didn't,  it  doesn't  matter.  I  do  so  want  you  to  be 
happy.  ...  I  blame  myself  awfully  for  the  silly  things 
I've  said  to  you  .  .  .  about  religion  ...  it  may  have 
made  you  dislike  mission  work.  .  .  ." 

But  Lucy  sobbed  out  "  It  hadn't  .  .  .  that  she  was 
a  little  fool  and  he  mustn't  take  any  notice  .  .  .  she'd 
never,  never  behave  like  this  again  .  .  .  after  his  ex- 
traordinary kindness  too,  which  she  would  always  be 
grateful  for.  He  mustn't  think  any  more  about  it  or 
ever  refer  to  it  again.  .  .  ." 

And  before  he  could  say  anything  more,  or  that  cat, 
Mrs.  Bazzard,  return,  she  slipped  down  to  her  cabin, 
where  fortunately  she  was  alone  and  could  cry  her  fill 
without  attracting  attention.  But  as  she  lay  on  the 


86     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

bunk,  she  set  her  teeth  and  resolved,  come  what  may, 
she  would  not  put  thousands  of  miles  between  her 
and  ..."  Roger "...  she  mentally  uttered  the 
name.  Better  to  live  within  a  few  hundred  miles  of 
where  he  was  and  sometimes  see  and  hear  him.  Why 
.  .  .  Why  .  .  .  did  he  not  ask  her  to  marry  him? 
Yes,  and  ruin  his  career.  What  would  they  all  say 
at  Unguja  .  .  .  and  John?  .  .  .  Poor  John!  what  a 
shock  it  would  be  to  him.  There  was  the  note  he  had 
sent  to  greet  her  at  Aden,  to  the  address  of  the  steamer 
agent.  She  had  opened  it,  but  not  read  it  through, 
so  infatuated  was  she  with  Brentham  just  then.  .  .  . 

The  next  morning  Lucy  breakfasted  in  the  Ladies' 
Saloon,  pleading  sea-sickness.  Later  on,  she  went  to 
the  upper-deck,  but  armed  herself  with  the  Swahili 
Grammar,  a  defence  against  a  Brentham  who  purposely 
stayed  away,  talking  with  the  Captain,  and  none  against 
Mrs.  Bazzard,  who  pestered  her  with  inquiries  as  to 
her  "  headache,"  expressing  the  quotation  marks  in 
her  tone. 

Relations  however  became  more  normal  all  round 
the  day  after  that.  In  two  more  days  they  had  an- 
chored off  Lamu.  Lucy  saw  two  low  islands,  with 
hazy  forest  country  on  the  distant  mainland.  Lamu 
island  had  low  sandhills  projecting  into  the  sea,  and 
on  one  of  them  was  an  obelisk  or  pillar  which  Captain 
Brentham  said  was  an  important  historical  monument 
erected  by  the  Portuguese  nearly  four  hundred  years 
before.  The  two  women  were  eager  to  land  and  see 
East  Africa  for  the  first  time.  They  went  ashore  with 
him  in  the  Vice-Consul's  boat;  for  there  was  a  Vice- 
Consul  here  who  had  been  expecting  Brentham's  visit 
and  was  delighted  to  find  two  English  ladies  invading 
his  solitude.  They  saw,  when  they  landed,  masses  of 
vague  masonry,  the  remains  of  Portuguese  or  Arab 
forts,  and  a  litter  of  human  skulls  and  bones  on  the 
beach  at  which  they  both  shrieked  in  simulated  horror. 


THE  VOYAGE  OUT  87 

These  might  have  been  the  results  of  the  last  Somali 
raid,  or  of  slaves  who  had  died  on  the  shore  unshipped, 
owing  to  the  vigilance  of  British  cruisers,  or  even  have 
dated  back  to  the  expulsion  of  the  Portuguese  by  the 
Arabs  two  hundred  years  before.  The  town  of  Lamu 
was  a  two  miles'  walk  along  the  sandy  shore  from  the 
point  where  they  had  landed,  but  the  sight  of  the  ex- 
traordinary coloured,  blue,  red,  and  green  crabs  that 
scuttled  and  yet  threatened  with  uplifted  claws,  and 
of  the  natives  who  accompanied  them  in  a  laughing 
rabble,  some  clothed  to  the  heels,  others  practically 
naked,  relieved  the  tedium  of  the  journey.  The  smells 
from  the  precincts  and  the  heart  of  Lamu  town  were 
so  awful  as  to  be  interesting.  The  strongest —  from 
rancid  shark's  liver  oil  —  was  said  to  be  quite  whole- 
some, but  that  from  the  sewage  and  the  refuse  on  the 
shore-mud  caused  them  to  hold  handkerchiefs  to  noses. 
However,  the  town  was  very  picturesque  with  its  Arab 
and  Persian  houses  of  white  stone,  its  Saracenic  door- 
ways, in  the  angles  of  which  Persian  pottery  was  em- 
bedded, and  its  heavy  doors  of  carved  wood.  The 
Consulate  stood  a  little  beyond  the  town,  in  a  walled 
garden  of  palms,  fig  trees,  and  trees  of  gorgeous  scarlet 
blossoms.  Here  they  had  a  cup  of  tea,  and  the  Con- 
sular boat,  which  had  been  following  them  along  the 
shore,  took  them  back  to  the  Jeddah,  thankful  in  the 
blazing  sunshine  for  their  pith  helmets  and  white  um- 
brellas. 

This  excursion  somehow,  with  its  introduction  to  the 
realities  and  romance  of  tropical  Africa,  braced  up 
Lucy  for  the  next  day  but  one,  when  in  the  very  early 
morning  the  Jeddah  anchored  in  the  roadstead  of  Un- 
guja.  She  was  dressed  by  eight  o'clock  and  sat  await- 
ing in  the  stuffy  Ladies'  Saloon  the  arrival  of  John, 
or  whoever  was  coming  to  meet  her.  Sat  with  trem- 
bling, perspiring  hands  in  open-work  cotton  gloves, 
wishing  the  suspense  over.  There  were  sounds  of 


88      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

loud  voices  on  deck.  .  .  .  Mrs.  Bazzard,  exploding 
in  connubial  raptures  over  her  husband;  Bazzard,  in 
between  her  embraces,  striving  to  assume  a  partly 
respectful,  partly  comrade-like  attitude  with  Captain 
Brentham,  to  combine  a  recognition  that  he  was  greet- 
ing his  official  superior  for  the  moment  with  the  as- 
sured standing  of  one  who  had  had  longer  experience 
of  official  cares.  She  heard  him  saying:  "  Your  boat 
is  waiting  for  you,  Sir.  I  will  arrange  to  send  a  lighter 
for  your  baggage  as  soon  as  it  is  up  out  of  the 
hold.  .  .  ." 

Then  blundering  steps  down  some  stairway  and  along 
the  passage,  and  John  stood  before  her,  sun-helmet  in 
hand,  eyes  blazing  with  hungry  love,  saying,  stammer- 
ing rather — "My  Lucy!  C — Come  at  last!  Oh, 
how  I've  looked  forward.  .  .  .  How  .  .  ."  But  he 
crushed  her  to  him  in  a  rough  embrace,  unmindful 
of  her  delicate  cotton  dress  and  of  the  fact  that  his  red 
face  was  covered  with  perspiration.  .  .  .  But  there 
was  something  so  appealing  and  yet  so  masterful  in 
his  love,  and  also  something  so  reminiscent  of  the  park 
seat  at  Englefield  and  that  Sunday  walk,  that  Lucy  in 
yielding  to  his  embrace  said  within  herself,  "  How 
could  I  have  thought  of  throwing  him  over?  " 

Together  they  went  on  shore.  Brentham  had  not 
even  stayed  to  say  good-bye.  Somebody  saw  after  her 
luggage.  She  had  so  lost  interest  in  it  that  she  did  not 
care  if  anything  was  missing.  .  .  .  Then  John  said : 
"  I  hope  you've  brought  out  the  Harmonium  that 
your  uncle  gave  us,"  and  she  replied  a  little  listlessly : 
"  Oh  yes !  it  was  such  a  bother  getting  it  across  Lon- 
don, but  I  think  it's  on  board." 

"  I  am  taking  you,"  said  John,  inconsequently,  in 
the  boat,  devouring  her  with  his  eyes  all  the  time,  "  to 
stay  with  Mrs.  Ewart  Stott  until  we're  married." 


CHAPTER  VII 

UNGUJA AND    UP-COUNTRY 

EVERY  two  or  three  years  in  those  days  you  met 
either  Mr.  or  Mrs.  Ewart  Stott  at  Unguja,  usually 
at  the  ramshackle  residence  and  place  of  business  of 
Mr.  Callaway,  the  Commercial  Agent  of  the  East  Afri- 
can Mission.  And  when  Mrs.  Ewart  Stott  was  there 
she  took  command,  so  that  you  instinctively  greeted 
her  as  hostess.  Mr.  Callaway  was  quite  willing  it 
should  be  so,  because  she  accomplished  wonders  in  set- 
ting his  untidy  house  in  order;  she  gingered  up  his 
servants  and  routed  the  cockroaches,  chased  away  some 
of  the  smells,  and  generally  cured  a  feverish  attack  by 
quinine,  chicken  broth,  and  motherly  care. 

The  Ewart  Stotts  as  missionaries  were  independent 
because  Mrs.  Ewart  Stott  had  begun  as  Church  of 
England  and  Mr.  E.  S.  as  a  Presbyterian,  yet  they 
could  not  quite  agree  with  the  discipline  or  the  ideals 
of  the  different  churches  or  sects  and  preferred  evan- 
gelizing East  Africa  on  a  plan  of  their  own.  They 
had  private  means  —  at  any  rate  at  first ;  until  they 
had  run  through  them  in  founding  mission  stations, 
whereafter  they  were  supported  by  anonymous  bene- 
factors. And  as  their  tenets  and  modus  operandi  were 
nearest  to  those  of  the  Methodists'  East  African  Mis- 
sion, they  worked  alongside  them  and  made  use  of 
their  Agent  and  depot  at  Unguja. 

Both  were  of  Ulster  parentage,  with  some  admixture 
of  a  more  genial  stock ;  yet  both  were  born  in  Australia. 
She  as  a  Miss  Ewart  and  he  originally  a  Mr.  Stott. 
At  the  same  moment,  so  to  speak,  they  had  "  found 

89 


90     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

Christ,"  and  it  really  seemed  a  logical  sequel  that 
Providence  should  bring  them  together  at  some  Aus- 
tralian religious  merry-making.  They  instantly  fell  in 
love,  quickly  married  and  fused  their  surnames.  She 
was  twenty,  he  twenty-two.  She  was  distinctly  per- 
sonable and  he  quite  good-looking.  They  had  prob- 
ably been  born,  both  of  them,  perfectly  good,  uncon- 
sciously sinless,  so  that  the  getting  of  religion  did  not 
make  them  better  or  more  likeable  but  only  afflicted 
them  with  a  mania  for  quoting  hymns,  psalms,  and 
Bible  texts  a  tout  propos  and  seeing  the  Lord's  hand, 
His  Divine  interference  in  every  incident,  every  acci- 
dent, any  change  for  better  or  worse  which  affected 
themselves.  They  were  constantly  in  receipt  of  Di- 
vine intimations  generally  after  communing  in  prayer. 
And  these  they  obeyed  as  promptly  as  possible. 

For  instance,  only  six  months  after  they  were  mar- 
ried, and  when  their  eldest  child  was  already  on  its 
way,  they  were  inspired  to  evangelize  East  Africa. 
Forthwith  they  sold  up  their  home  in  South  Australia, 
took  ship  with  an  immense  outfit  to  Aden,  and  thence 
transferred  themselves  to  Unguja  and  the  Zangian 
mainland. 

They  wished  to  preach  nothing  but  "  Christ  cruci- 
fied "  and  the  new  life  which  black  men  and  white 
men  should  lead  after  "  accepting  of  "  this  sacrifice, 
this  atonement  for  the  presumed  sinfulness  of  poor, 
martyred  humanity.  But  despite  this  broad,  if  illog- 
ical, basis  of  their  propaganda,  they  were  afflicted  with 
a  bitter  dislike  of  Science,  which  they  concentrated  on 
the  theory  of  Evolution,  or  on  any  Biblical  criticism 
which  would  weaken  their  faith  in  a  very  manlike  God 
who  apparently  turned  his  back  on  his  own  universe  to 
concern  himself  solely  and  very  fussily,  very  ineffec- 
tively with  one  of  its  grains  of  dust,  a  tiny  planet 
circling  round  a  fifth-rate  star  among  a  billion  other 
stars.  For  the  rest,  they  had  infinite  courage,  infinite 


UNGUJA  — AND  UP-COUNTRY  91 

love  and  charity,  immense  powers  of  work,  but  no 
sense  of  humour. 

Consul  after  Consul  warned  them  as  to  the  risks 
they  ran  in  plunging  —  Father,  Mother  and  Babies  — 
into  unexplored  Africa  of  the  worst  reputation.  They 
smilingly  ignored  warnings  and  protests,  .  .  .  wild 
beasts,  wild  peoples,  wild  climates,  wild  scenery  —  all 
seemed  against  them.  Mr.  Stott  was  once  tossed  by 
a  rhinoceros  into  a  river;  but  the  water  broke  his 
fall  and  he  emerged  before  the  crocodiles  woke  up,  and 
staggered  back  to  camp,  only  slightly  wounded. 
Shortly  afterwards,  hundreds  of  Masai  warriors 
charged  their  camp,  and  their  coast  porters  fled  into 
the  bush.  The  naked,  fat-and-ochre-anointed  warriors 
with  their  six-foot  spears  found  Mrs.  Stott  sipping 
tea  at  her  camp-table  and  sewing  clothes  for  her  baby, 
while  Mr.  Stott  with  bound-up  wounds  was  lying  on 
a  camp-bed.  Mrs.  Stott,  convinced  that  the  Almighty 
was  somewhere  in  the  offing,  smiled  on  the  warriors 
and  shared  her  plum  cake  among  the  foremost.  They 
returned  the  smile,  enlarging  it  into  a  roar  of  laugh- 
ter. After  executing  a  war  dance  they  withdrew,  and 
later  on  sent  her  a  large  gourd  of  fresh  milk. 

After  some  floundering,  owing  to  the  uncertain  in- 
dications of  the  Divine  will  and  purpose,  they  had  set- 
tled on  the  old  explorer  and  missionary  route  to  the 
Victoria  Nyanza,  due  west  of  Unguja  in  what  was 
called  the  Ugogo  country,  partly  because  the  Wa-gogo 
were  thought  to  be  quite  recalcitrant  to  Christianity. 

Lucy  Josling,  who  had  had  much  of  this  summary 
poured  into  her  half-attentive  hearing  by  her  betrothed, 
as  they  walked  through  the  narrow  lanes  between  the 
tall  stone  houses  of  Unguja  —  she  much  more  inter- 
ested by  the  handsomely  dressed  Arabs,  the  veiled 
women,  the  wandering  bulls  and  their  owners,  salaam- 
ing Indians  —  entered  at  last  the  Arab  house  rented  by 
Mr.  Callaway  for  his  Agency. 


92     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

Passing  through  a  dark  entry  and  corridor  they 
emerged  into  a  courtyard  with  an  immense  fig-tree  in 
the  middle.  Round  this  square  space  there  was  a 
broad  and  shady  verandah.  Mrs.  Stott  rose  from  her 
sewing-machine  and  greeted  Lucy  with  that  simple 
cordiality  which  made  her  so  many  friends  among  the 
converted  and  the  unconvertible. 

"  You  must  feel  quite  dazed  being  on  shore  after 
so  many  weeks  at  sea.  You'd  like  to  go  to  your  room, 
I  know,  and  perhaps  be  quiet  there  till  our  midday 
meal.  We've  done  the  best  we  could  for  you  —  at 
short  notice  —  for  your  young  man  and  I  have  only 
been  at  Unguja  since  Saturday.  We  travelled  down 
together,  he  to  get  married,  of  course,  and  I  to  see  to 
a  large  consignment  of  goods  that  has  arrived  for  us 
here.  I  also  expected  a  recruit  for  our  Mission,  but 
he  does  not  seem  to  have  caught  this  steamer." 

Mrs.  Stott  then  led  the  way  to  Lucy's  room,  and 
John  departed  to  the  Customs  House  to  clear  her  bag- 
gage and  get  it  stored:  a  matter  which  would  occupy 
him  for  the  rest  of  the  daylight. 

Although  the  upstairs  bedroom  that  Lucy  was  to 
occupy  smelt,  like  all  the  rest  of  the  premises,  of  copra, 
aniseed,  cockroaches,  dried  fish,  shark's  liver  oil,  curry- 
powder,  rats'  and  bats'  manure,  in  one  badly  mingled 
essence,  with  this  and  that  ingredient  sometimes  pre- 
vailing, it  seemed  clean  and  airy,  and  there  was  some 
grace  and  refinement  in  the  clean  bed  linen,  white 
mosquito  curtain,  and  bunch  of  Frangipani  flowers  in 
a  Persian  pottery  vase.  Instinctively  she  turned  to 
Mrs.  Stott  with  tears  in  her  eyes.  "  This  is  your  do- 
ing, I  am  sure !  Somehow  you  remind  me  of  mother." 

"  Well,"  said  Mrs.  Stott,  "  that's  just  what  I  should 
like  to  do;  though  I  suppose  I'm  not  older  than  an 
elder  sister;  only  this  African  life  ages  one  very 
quickly." 

The  heat  during  the  rest  of  the  day  seemed  to  Lucy 


UNGUJA  — AND  UP-COUNTRY  93 

in  this  low-ceilinged  room,  in  a  low-lying  part  of  the 
town,  almost  unbearable.  She  spent  much  of  the 
afternoon  lying  on  her  bed  in  deshabille,  a  constant 
prey  to  home-sickness.  She  tried  at  one  time  playing 
with  the  little  Stott  child  on  the  landing,  but  it  was 
much  more  interested  in  the  large  red-black  cock- 
roaches which  it  caught  with  surprising  swiftness  of 
aim  and  without  any  of  Lucy's  shuddering  horror. 
It  would  hold  these  insects  with  their  little  flat  heads, 
twirling  antennae,  scratchy  legs  and  fat  yellow  bellies 
quite  firmly  (yet  not  unkindly)  in  its  plump  fingers  for 
grave  consideration ;  then  let  them  go  to  run  over  the 
planks.  Mrs.  Stott  was  away  to  the  Customs  House; 
a  pale,  perspiring,  half-clothed  Indian  clerk  was  pass- 
ing in  and  out  of  the  house  on  Mr.  Calla way's  busi- 
ness, too  fever-stricken  and  listless  to  care  one  grain 
of  damaged  rice  about  this  young  woman  fresh  from 
England.  The  fleas  on  the  ground-floor  verandah  and 
business  premises  were  too  numerous  for  any  novice 
to  endure.  Lucy's  only  resource  was  to  return  to  her 
room,  rid  herself  of  these  persecutors  by  undressing 
and  await  with  patience  the  after-sunset  cooler  air.  A 
visit  from  Mrs.  Stott  at  half-past  six  notified  that  the 
evening  meal  would  be  served  at  seven  and  that  John 
Baines  had  seen  to  all  Lucy's  luggage.  Such  as  she 
wanted  for  the  next  few  days  was  ready  to  be  brought 
up  for  her  use;  the  rest  would  be  put  in  the  go-down 
to  await  the  departure  in  the  "  dau  "  *  that  would 
convey  them  to  the  mainland.  Lucy  therefore  had  to 
rise  and  dress,  come  down  and  force  herself  to  show 
some  affection  for  her  betrothed  and  some  interest  in 
her  mass  of  luggage  —  all  the  while  preoccupied  by  the 
mosquitoes  which  bit  her  ankles,  the  fleas  that  attacked 
her  with  renewed  voracity,  the  cockroaches  which  scur- 
ried about  her  feet,  and  the  smells  which  made  her 
sick.  She  enjoyed  the  chicken  broth  flavoured  with 

1  Decked  Arab  sailing-ship. 


94     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

hot  red  chillies  and  the  coco-nut  milk  served  round 
for  drinks  at  the  evening  meal;  and  picked  a  bit  of 
fish,  fresh  and  flaky.  Also  she  appreciated  the  dessert 
of  pineapples,  mangoes  and  oranges.  Instead  of  coffee 
afterwards  they  had  tea,  with  goat's  milk.  This  was 
thirst-quenching  and  helped  to  diminish  the  racking 
headache  which  had  been  steadily  reaching  a  climax 
during  the  evening. 

At  nine  o'clock  all  vestiges  of  a  meal  were  cleared 
away  and  John,  Mr.  Callaway  and  even  Mrs.  Stott 
assumed  an  air  of  portentousness  as  about  twenty-four 
able-bodied  Negroes  filed  in  and  the  two  or  three  Negro 
servants  of  the  Stotts  set  out  a  number  of  hymn-books 
and  a  large  Bible.  John  then  read  prayers  and  a 
portion  of  scripture  in  Swahili  while  the  Christianized 
negroes  dutifully  knelt,  sat,  and  stood  to  sing  hymns  in 
unison  with  their  white  employers.  The  hymns  being 
likewise  in  the  Swahili  language,  the  whole  ceremony 
—  occupying  about  half  an  hour  —  was  without  mean- 
ing to  Lucy,  who  was  driven  nearly  frantic  by  the  fleas 
and  mosquitoes.  At  last,  bed-time  came;  John  un- 
willingly took  his  leave,  promising  to  call  round  for 
Lucy  at  eight  in  the  morning  to  take  her  on  a  round 
of  visits.  Lucy,  in  very  low  spirits,  retired  to  her  bed- 
room, but  Mrs.  Stott  followed.  Without  being  asked 
for  any  explanation  she  was  allowed  to  cry  for  five 
minutes  on  Mrs.  Stott's  neck.  Then  the  latter  un- 
dressed her,  rubbed  the  bites  with  some  cooling  lotion, 
administered  five  grains  of  quinine  and  put  her  to  bed. 

What  with  the  squeaking  and  chattering  of  the  fruit- 
bats  eating  the  figs  outside,  the  rats  running  over  the 
floor  of  her  room,  and  a  tornado  of  thunder,  lightning 
and  drumming  rain,  the  night  was  not  a  pleasant  one. 
But  when  Mrs.  Stott  woke  her  with  a  cup  of  tea  and 
she  ventured  outside  her  mosquito-curtain,  things  took 
a  brighter  aspect.  She  had  from  her  window  a  glimpse 
of  the  sparkling  blue  bay  in  the  level  rays  of  the  just- 


UNGUJA  — AND  UP-COUNTRY  95 

risen  sun,  a  fringe  of  coco-nut  palms,  their  fronds  still 
wet  with  the  rain,  a  tangle  of  brown  shipping  —  Arab 
"  daus  "  and  Indian  "  baghalas  " —  hauled  up  for  re- 
pairs; and  the  atmosphere  was  cleared  and  fresh  after 
the  tornado.  She  was  almost  cheerful  by  the  time 
she  had  dressed  and  come  downstairs.  Mrs.  Stott 
had  advised  her  to  put  on  high  boots  to  save  her 
ankles  from  mosquito  bites,  and  to  dust  herself  freely 
with  Insecticide  powder  to  discourage  the  fleas.  As 
a  special  indulgence  to  a  tired  visitor  she  was  let  off 
morning  prayers  and  only  heard  the  nasal  singing 
whilst  completing  her  toilet  in  her  room  after  a  pleas- 
ant little  breakfast  in  bed,  over  a  book.  John  duly 
came  with  a  carriage  borrowed  from  the  Sultan's  sta- 
bles, and  Lucy  —  almost  gay  once  more  —  set  out  with 
him  to  be  introduced  to  Archdeacon  Gravening  —  who 
in  the  absence  of  the  Bishop  (on  tour)  was  to  perform 
the  religious  marriage  ceremony  at  the  Cathedral. 

Gravening  was  an  austere-looking  man  but  of  kindly 
disposition.  He  made  her  feel  at  home,  and  as  he 
knew  the  Reading  district  in  old  Oxford  days  of  walk- 
ing tours  and  reading-parties  he  could  talk  about  that 
home-country  which,  as  it  receded  in  time  from  her 
contemplation,  seemed  a  Paradise  she  had  recklessly 
quitted. 

The  ladies  of  the  Anglican  Mission  —  a  celibate 
Mission  when  at  work  in  Africa,  its  members  being 
supposed  to  leave  its  ranks  when  they  married  —  re- 
ceived Lucy  with  some  detachment  of  manner.  They 
were  good  creatures,  indeed,  but  they  came  from  a  so- 
cial stratum  one  or  even  two  degrees  higher  than  hers, 
and  inwardly  they  were  less  tolerant  of  Nonconform- 
ists than  were  their  men  fellow-workers.  Lucy,  they 
had  ascertained,  was  a  "  Church  person,"  but  she  was 
about  to  marry  into  a  Methodist  Mission.  However, 
her  rather  plaintive  prettiness  and  the  home-sick  mel- 
ancholy in  her  eyes  enlisted  their  womanly  sympathy. 


96      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

Two  of  them  offered  themselves  in  a  bride's  maid  ca- 
pacity, and  the  Sisterhood  in  general  proposed  that  the 
honeymoon  should  be  spent  at  their  little  country 
retreat  of  Mbweni.  But  John  explained  as  to  this, 
that  he  could  not  prolong  his  absence  from  the  up- 
country  station  more  than  was  just  necessary  for  the 
prescribed  residence  at  Unguja;  and  that  their  honey- 
moon must  be  spent  on  the  return  journey.  He  di- 
lated, for  Lucy's  encouragement,  on  the  picnic  charms 
of  the  "  Safari."  x 

***** 

During  the  ten  days  of  her  pre-nuptial  stay  at 
Unguja  Lucy  had  no  talk  with  Brentham.  Presum- 
ably he  was  too  busy  over  political  and  Consular  mat- 
ters. Once  indeed  when  walking  with  John  through 
the  winding  streets  of  the  African-Oriental  city  she 
had  seen  him  out  riding  with  Bazzard,  the  Vice-Consul. 
John  had  accomplished  all  the  preliminary  formalities, 
and  on  her  marriage  morning  —  early  on  account  of 
the  heat  —  Lucy  went  in  one  of  the  Sultan's  carriages, 
attended  by  Mrs.  Stott  and  the  two  ladies  of  the 
Anglican  Mission,  to  the  British  Agency.  John  met 
them  at  the  entrance;  they  walked  slowly  up  the  stone 
steps  to  the  office  for  the  transaction  of  Consular  busi- 
ness. Bazzard,  with  Mrs.  Bazzard  —  the  latter  as- 
suming the  airs  of  a  Vice-reine  —  met  them  there  and 
ranged  the  wedding  party  in  order.  Brentham  then 
entered,  bowed  to  them  both,  but  avoided  meeting 
Lucy's  eyes.  He  put  to  them  in  a  level  business-like 
voice  the  necessary  interrogatory  and  declared  them 
duly  married.  The  party  then  passed  into  one  of  the 
Agency's  drawing-rooms.  Champagne  —  and  lemon- 
ade for  the  teetotalers  —  was  served,  together  with 
mixed  biscuits  and  sweetmeats.  The  Acting  Consul- 
General  proposed  the  health  of  the  Bride,  and  for  the 

1  The  accepted  meaning  of  "  Safari "  is  a  journey  with  tents, 
and  porters  to  carry  the  baggage. 


UNGUJA  — AND  UP-COUNTRY  97 

first  time  looked  Lucy  full  in  the  face.  He  next  with- 
drew on  to  a  verandah  and  talked  for  some  time  with 
the  bridegroom  about  his  mission  station  and  the  jour- 
ney thither  and  spoke  earnestly  on  the  subject  of  Lucy 
and  her  welfare,  instancing  his  interest  in  her  home- 
country  as  well  as  his  position  as  "  their "  Consul 
to  explain  his  anxiety  as  to  her  future.  Then  return- 
ing to  the  general  company  he  handed  Lucy  a  small 
case  which  he  said  contained  a  trifling  wedding  present 
and  wished  her  all  possible  happiness,  promising  "  some 
day  or  other  "  to  visit  her  in  her  new  home.  He 
grasped  her  hand  with  a  brief  pressure  and  —  plead- 
ing urgent  business  as  an  excuse  for  not  following 
the  party  to  the  Cathedral  —  withdrew  to  his  office. 
Mrs.  Bazzard  introduced  her  husband  and  bestowed  a 
condescending  patronage  on  Lucy  and  on  the  Mission 
ladies,  who,  never  having  met  her  before,  found  them- 
selves almost  audibly  wondering  who  on  earth  she  was, 
and  where  —  with  that  slightly  cockney  accent  —  she 
had  come  from. 

The  religious  ceremony  at  the  Cathedral  was  one  of 
considerable  ecclesiastical  pomp,  secretly  enjoyed  by 
John  Baines ;  who,  however,  thought  on  what  mother 
would  say  when  he  told  her  he  had  nearly  been  married 
by  a  Bishop  and  quite  so  by  an  Archdeacon,  and  still 
more  how  she  would  have  appreciated  the  black  aco- 
lytes in  their  scarlet  cassocks  and  white  dalmatics, 
the  incense-smell  in  the  building,  and  the  vestments 
of  the  clergy. 

After  they  left  the  Cathedral  they  repaired  to  the 
Arab  house  of  stone  and  rich  Persian  and  Kurdish 
carpets  in  which  Archdeacon  Gravening  lived.  Here 
an  unpretentious  luncheon  was  given  as  a  wedding 
breakfast.  Gravening  hardly  ever  spoke  about  reli- 
gion, which  was  why  Mrs.  Stott  despaired  of  his  being 
saved,  though  she  admitted  he  was  compact  of  quiet 
kindness.  His  one  enthusiasm  was  language  study. 


98      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

He  was  deeply  versed  in  the  Bantu  languages  and  trans- 
lated for  the  Anglican  Mission  most  of  the  works  they 
required  to  use  in  their  schools  and  churches.  He  had 
corresponded  with  John  Baines,  and  the  latter  had 
written  down  for  him  samples  of  vocabularies  of  the 
different  languages  heard  in  his  district. 

Some  insight  into  the  conflict  going  on  in  the  dazed 
mind  of  Lucy  —  who  throughout  these  ceremonies 
looked  as  though  she  were  a  wound-up  automaton  — 
inspired  Mrs.  Stott  to  suggest  to  John  that  as  they 
were  due  to  start  in  the  Arab  dau  early  the  next  morn- 
ing in  order  to  reach  the  mainland  port  of  Lingani 
before  nightfall,  Lucy  should  spend  the  rest  of  her 
marriage-day  and  night  with  Mrs.  Stott,  and  their 
honeymoon  should  not  commence  till  they  reached  the 
Mission  house  at  Lingani.  This  they  would  have  to 
themselves  for  three  or  four  days  whilst  their  caravan 
for  up-country  was  being  got  ready.  Accordingly  poor 
John,  when  the  wedding  luncheon  was  over  and  the 
guests  had  dispersed,  surrendered  Lucy  to  Mrs.  Stott 
and  spent  the  rest  of  the  day  rather  disconsolately  mak- 
ing his  preparations  for  departure.  Lucy  got  through 
much  of  that  hot  afternoon  in  her  nightdress  —  for 
coolness  —  inside  the  mosquito  curtains  of  her  bed, 
weeping  at  times  hysterically;  tortured  with  home- 
sickness one  minute  and  at  another  seized  with  a  mad 
longing  to  call  on  Brentham  at  the  Agency  and  see  him 
once  more.  Sometimes  she  felt  an  actual  dislike  for 
John ;  at  others  a  great  pity  for  him,  yet  a  shuddering 
at  the  idea  of  his  embraces,  of  any  physical  contact 
with  him. 

Mrs.  Stott  prayed  for  her,  apart  in  her  own  bed- 
room, but  the  Divine  direction  of  her  thoughts  seemed 
to  take  the  line  that  the  least  said  was  the  soonest 
mended,  and  that  the  young  couple  had  better  be  left  to 


UNGUJA  — AND  UP-COUNTRY  99 

their  own  society  at  Lingani  to  come  to  an  under- 
standing. 

The  next  morning,  however,  it  was  a  composed 
though  rather  silent  Lucy  who  was  punctually  ready 
to  go  away  with  John  when  he  came  to  fetch  her  to 
embark  in  the  dau.  Mrs.  Stott  had  risen  early  to 
make  coffee  for  them  and  give  them  a  send-off  of  em- 
braces, and  provisions  for  a  nice  cold  lunch  on  board. 
"  My  dear,"  she  said  to  Lucy,  "  you'll  have  a  delightful 
water  picnic.  There's  going  to  be  just  wind  enough 
to  blow  you  across.  I  wish  I  were  coming  with  you, 
but  I  shan't  get  away  for  another  fortnight.  How- 
ever, we  shall  meet  in  the  interior,  I  dare  say,  before 
very  long." 

John  had  made  for  his  bride  a  little  nest  among 
cushions  and  clean  brightly-coloured  grass  mats  in  the 
deck  cabin  of  the  dau  (a  mere  palm-thatch  shelter), 
and  for  an  hour  or  so  a  smile  came  back  to  Lucy's  sad 
face  as  she  appreciated  the  pleasant  freshness  of  the 
morning  breeze,  the  picturesqueness  of  the  boat  and 
the  vivid  blue  or  emerald  green  of  the  water  according 
as  it  was  deep  or  shallow.  She  had  quite  an  appetite 
for  the  early  lunch  which  Mrs.  Stott  had  thoughtfully 
provided.  But  presently  an  anxious  look  came  into 
her  face  and  a  restlessness  of  manner.  "  John!  Can 
I  be  coming  out  in  a  rash  ?  I  feel  an  intolerable  itch- 
ing round  my  neck  and  wrists  —  Oh !  Horror ! 
What  is  this?"  And  she  pointed  to  some  flat,  dark 
brown  disks  which  were  scurrying  out  of  sight  up  her 
arms  and  into  the  folds  of  her  linen  bodice.  .  .  . 

"  Bugs! "  said  John,  shocked  and  apologetic,  "  they 
are  sometimes  found  in  these  Arab  vessels.  ...  I  am 
so  sorry.  .  .  .  Yet  there  was  no  other  way  of  crossing 
to  Lingani.  .  .  ." 

Lucy  went  white  with  disgust.  From  the  palm  mid- 
ribs which  arched  over  the  cabin  roof  of  thatch  there 


ioo      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

came  dropping  hundreds  of  bugs  on  to  the  unhappy 
young  woman,  ignoring  or  avoiding  him  who  would 
have  willingly  offered  himself  as  sacrifice  and  substi- 
tute. Lucy  in  her  dismay,  knowing  she  could  not  un- 
dress before  the  boatmen  and  porters  and  yet  not  know- 
ing how  she  could  endure  hours  of  this  maddening 
irritation  from  half -venomous  bites,  broke  out  into 
weeping.  "  What  was  to  be  done  ?  "  questioned  the 
poor  distraught  bridegroom.  The  gentle  breeze  had 
died  away  ...  an  intense  heat  prevailed;  the  dau 
scarcely  moved  across  a  glassy  sea  .  .  .  the  Nakhodha 
or  Swahili  captain  of  the  dau  was  standing  up  over  the 
rudder  and  signalling  with  his  sinewy  hand,  crying  out 
in  a  melodious  cadence :  "  Njoo !  Kusi-Kusi,  Njoo, 
Kusi-Kusi !  "  *  afraid  his  vessel  might  be  becalmed  and 
prevented  from  reaching  port  in  daylight.  The  boat- 
men and  porters  were  looking  at  one  another  with 
round  eyes  as  they  heard  the  Bibi 2  crying  convulsively 
in  the  deck  cabin.  John  in  his  desperation  had  a  bright 
idea.  He  knew  that  the  ordinary,  vaunted  insecticides 
had  no  terror  for,  no  deterrent  effect  on,  either  bugs  or 
their  unrelated  mimics,  the  poisonous  ticks  of  Central 
Africa;  but  that  both  alike  fled  before  the  smell  of 
petroleum.  There  were  tins  of  that  mineral  oil  on 
board,  provision  for  his  lamps  up-country.  Opening 
one  of  these  cautiously,  for  petroleum  was  very  pre- 
cious, he  filled  an  enamelled  iron  cup  and  then  stoppered 
the  tin.  From  his  medicine  chest  he  obtained  cotton- 
wool. Then  with  wads  of  this,  and  with  his  handker- 
chief, he  dabbed  the  swollen  wrists  and  the  weals  on 
Lucy's  neck  and  advised  her  to  thrust  the  saturated 
wads  and  linen  inside  her  clothing. 

The  strong  odour  of  the  oil  in  a  few  minutes  caused 
the  blood-sucking  insects  to  withdraw  and  return  to 
their  lairs  in  the  thatch  and  boards.  The  south  wind 

1 "  Come  south  wind,  come !  " 
2  Lady. 


UNGUJA  — AND  UP-COUNTRY  lot 

came  at  last  in  puffs,  which  lessened  the  heat,  but 
there  set  in  a  swell  which  caused  the  dau  to  roll.  This 
movement  disturbed  the  bilge  water  below  the  decks, 
and  from  this  was  disengaged  a  sulphuretted-hydrogen 
stench  almost  bad  enough  to  drive  the  bugs  from  Lucy's 
mind.  But  the  wind  grew  steadier  and  at  last  blew 
the  rotten  dau  to  the  landing-place  at  the  mouth  of  a 
river  where  they  were  to  disembark. 

Lingani  was  a  smaller  edition  of  Unguja  Town: 
flat-roofed  Arab  houses  of  white-washed  coral  rock, 
thatched  wattle-and-daub  huts,  groves  of  coco-nut 
palms,  a  few  Casuarina  trees  and  Frangipani  shrubs, 
pariah  dogs,  wandering  zebu  cattle,  and  dwarf  goats. 
The  Mission  Rest-house  was  a  substantial  stone  build- 
ing in  the  Arab  style  of  East  Africa.  It  was  main- 
tained jointly  by  four  missionary  societies  for  use  by 
their  members  in  transit.  There  was  a  Swahili  couple 
in  charge  of  it,  husband  and  wife.  The  bed  linen, 
table-cloths,  napkins  and  cutlery  were  kept  in  cup- 
boards fastened  with  cunning  padlocks,  which  only 
opened  when  you  set  the  letters  of  the  lock  to  corre- 
spond with  the  word  "  open."  This  to  thwart  inquisi- 
tive natives,  with  a  smattering  of  education,  was  writ- 
ten up  for  reminder  in  Greek  letters.  With  this  ruse 
John  was  fully  acquainted,  so  that  he  lost  no  time  in 
opening  the  cupboards  and  releasing  the  wherewithal 
for  making  up  two  beds  and  laying  the  table  for  an 
evening  meal.  The  black  housekeepers,  proffering 
greetings  and  assurance  of  welcome  while  they  worked, 
busied  themselves  in  heating  water  for  baths,  in  mak- 
ing the  beds,  laying  the  table,  and  killing  chickens  for 
soup  and  roast.  John's  activities  were  multifold.  He 
had  to  see  the  dau  unloaded  and  its  precious  cargo 
safely  stowed  away  in  the  store  below  the  Rest-house. 

Lucy  at  first  sat  limply  in  the  divan  or  main  recep- 
tion-room, sore  all  over,  eyes  blistered  by  the  glare  of 
sun  on  water,  and  with  a  headache  which  for  crippling 


102      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

agony  exceeded  anything  she  had  known.  But  she 
conquered  her  sullenness  and  made  feeble  attempts  to 
help.  John,  however,  seeing  that  bath  and  bath  water 
were  ready  and  that  sheets,  pillows  and  blankets  had 
been  placed  on  her  Arab  bedstead  (a  wooden  frame 
with  a  lattice-work  across  it  of  ox-hide  strips),  advised 
her  to  undress,  soothe  her  bites  with  spongings  and 
ointment,  and  rest  between  the  sheets.  Her  back  ached 
unbearably;  her  head  seemed  half-severed  at  the  neck, 
and  she  was  seized  with  violent  shiverings.  The  mos- 
quitoes had  given  her  a  sharp  attack  of  malarial  fever. 

Once  in  bed,  she  felt  less  acutely  ill,  but  of  all  the 
nice  meal  that  John  and  the  Swahili  man-cook  had  pre- 
pared she  could  only  swallow  a  cup  of  tea.  Her  tem- 
perature was  found  to  be  up  to  102°,  so  the  first  and 
the  six  succeeding  nights  of  the  honeymoon  were 
spent  in  dire  illness  and  dreary  convalescence.  But 
at  the  end  of  that  time  she  seemed  well  enough  to  start 
on  their  up-country  journey.  John  had  obtained  two 
Masai  donkeys  and  had  bought  at  Unguja  a  second- 
hand side-saddle.  Lucy  cheered  up  at  the  prospect  of 
donkey-riding  and  above  all  at  leaving  this  terribly  hot 
coast  town  for  the  cooler  nights  of  the  interior. 
Though  still  deeply  depressed  and  disheartened,  she 
was  sufficiently  reasonable  and  well-disposed  to  be 
deeply  touched  by  her  husband's  care  of  her,  his  fore- 
thought for  her  comfort  and  distress  at  the  incon- 
veniences of  semi-savage  Africa.  Some  measure  of 
health  came  back  to  her,  and  even  cheerfulness,  during 
the  first  easy  days  of  camp  life,  before  they  left  the 
semi-civilized  coast-belt,  with  its  shady  mango-trees 
for  the  midday  halt,  its  unfailing  water  supply  for  the 
thirsty  porters  and  the  white  man's  meals;  its  com- 
parative safety  at  night  from  wild  beasts  and  wild  na- 
tives. 

But  between  the  mountain  ranges  of  the  interior  — • 
whither  they  were  bound  —  and  this  settled  country  of 


UNGUJA  — AND  UP-COUNTRY  103 

cultivation  and  villages  more  or  less  governed  by  the 
Sultan  of  Unguja,  there  lay  a  desert  tract  almost  de- 
void of  water  and  ravaged  in  recent  times  by  a  clan 
of  the  raiding  Masai  known  to  the  Bantu  natives  as 
"  Wahumba."  They  had  recently  carried  out  a  ruth- 
less foray  across  the  plains.  The  native  wells  had 
fallen  in  or  their  location  had  been  forgotten  since  the 
destruction  of  the  villages.  Lucy  then  knew  for  the 
first  time  what  it  was  to  suffer  from  thirst,  and  to  have 
no  water  for  washing  in  the  morning  or  evening;  and 
when  a  little  water  was  obtained  from  nearly  dried  up 
rock-pools  or  the  bed  of  a  run-dry  stream,  to  be  hardly 
able  to  endure  the  sight  of  it,  much  less  taste  it,  when 
it  looked  like  strong  tea,  or  coffee-and-milk,  when  it 
smelt  of  stable  manure  or  was  alive  with  grubs  or 
wriggling  worms.  It  could  only  be  drunk  in  the  form 
of  tea,  after  it  had  been  strained,  boiled,  and  skimmed. 
John  had  prepared  for  some  such  contingency  in 
crossing  this  desert  strip  by  bringing  several  dozen 
coco-nuts  and  a  case  of  his  father's  cider  —  at  the  men- 
tion of  which  Lucy's  mouth  watered.  But  his  porters 
in  their  own  mad  thirst  had  disposed  of  the  coco-nuts 
and  their  milk,  and  the  carrier  who  bore  the  case  of 
champagne  cider  on  his  head  had,  of  course,  slipped 
on  a  slimy  boulder,  crossing  a  dry  stream,  down  had 
come  his  precious  load,  and  at  least  half  the  bottles  had 
cracked  and  poured  forth  their  sparkling  contents  over 
the  sand  or  into  the  porter's  protruded  mouth.  Still, 
the  other  six  bottles  were  retrieved  by  an  indignant 
John  who,  in  his  rage,  doffed  the  gentle  long-suffering 
missionary  —  which,  strange  to  say,  he  had  become  in 
these  few  months  —  witness  his  unselfish  and  patient 
care  of  his  rather  peevish  wife  —  and  kicked  the  care- 
less, sticky,  half -drunk  porter  with  all  the  vehemence 
of  an  unregenerate  Englishman.  The  porter  took  his 
chastisement  philosophically.  He  had  tasted  nectar. 
John  and  Lucy  drank  the  remainder  of  the  cider  dur- 


104      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

ing  the  second  half  of  that  day,  without  care  for  the 
morrow's  drought,  for  fear  lest  they  be  robbed  of  it 
by  some  other  accident.  .  .  . 

At  last  they  reached  a  running  stream  at  the  base  of 
the  foothills  which  marked  the  beginning  of  a  slow 
ascent  of  three  thousand  feet.  The  verdure,  and  the 
shade  this  created,  seemed  by  contrast  a  Paradise. 
They  pitched  their  camp  under  fine  umbrageous  trees, 
near  the  site  of  a  ruined  village  which  a  few  months 
previously  had  been  a  populous  centre.  Around  the 
mounds  of  clay  and  sticks  and  burnt  thatch  were 
luxuriant  banana  plantations  with  occasional  bunches 
of  ripening  bananas  —  though  the  monkeys  of  the 
adjacent  thicket  had  not  left  many  fit  for  eating. 
When  Lucy  had  quenched  her  thirst  exuberantly  from 
the  rivulet,  drinking  from  cups  of  folded  banana  fronds 
made  for  her  by  the  repentant  porter  of  the  broken 
cider  bottles,  her  sense  of  relief  and  contentment  at 
their  surroundings  was  a  little  marred  by  the  conscious- 
ness of  an  unpleasant  odour  which  came  to  them  fit- 
fully in  puffs  of  the  afternoon  breeze.  She  started  out 
to  explore  on  her  own  account  —  she  wore  high  boots 
and  had  a  tucked-in,  constricted  skirt.  Presently  she 
came  to  an  extensive  clearing  where  banana  trunks, 
brown  and  rotten,  had  been  felled  and  lay  prone  in  all 
directions,  half  covered  with  the  clay  tunnels  and  gal- 
leries of  white  ants.  Amongst  these  crumbling  cylin- 
ders lay  twenty  or  thirty  skeletons,  some  of  them  still 
retaining  strips  of  leathery  flesh  and  patches  of  Negro 
wool  on  the  whitened  skulls.  The  ground  at  the  rustle 
of  her  approach  began  to  swarm  with  a  myriad  of 
black,  biting  ants,  disturbed  in  their  daily  meal  off 
this  immense  supply  of  carrion.  Lucy  paid  little  heed 
to  them  for  the  moment  as  she  stood  horror-struck 
at  the  sight  of  hissing  snakes,  gliding  into  the  rank 
weeds,  probably  more  concerned  over  the  swarming 
of  the  ants  than  at  the  approach  of  a  solitary  human 


UNGUJA  — AND  UP-COUNTRY  105 

being.  She  also  noted  a  group  of  large,  grey-brown 
vultures  with  lean  whitish  necks,  which  hopped  heav- 
ily before  her  until  they  obtained  enough  impetus  to 
rise  above  the  ground  and  settle  on  the  branches  of  a 
baobab-tree.  Lucy,  horrified  by  this  unsavoury  Gol- 
gotha and  the  slithering  snakes,  was  uttering  several 
squeaks  of  dismay,  when  as  the  terrible  "  siafu  "  ants 
began  to  nip  the  skin  of  her  limbs  and  body,  her  cries 
changed  to  shrieks  of  terror.  Half -blindly  she  floun- 
dered over  disgusting  obstacles  back  towards  the  camp. 

John,  looking  very  tired  and  very  dirty,  came  rush- 
ing to  meet  her  and  upbraid  her  for  imprudence  in 
wandering  off  alone  where  the"re  was  danger  at  every 
turn;  but,  realizing  she  was  being  mercilessly  bitten 
by  the  "  siafu,"  he  hurried  her  into  the  tent,  let  down 
the  flaps  of  the  entrance  and  assisted  her  to  undress. 
She  had  to  be  reduced  to  absolute  nudity  before  the 
ants  could  be  removed.  They  had  fixed  their  man- 
dibles so  firmly  in  the  skin  that  in  pulling  them  off  the 
head  and  jaws  remained  behind,  and  for  weeks  after- 
wards this  unhappy  young  woman  went  about  with  a 
sore  and  inflamed  body. 

But  this  seeming  outrage  on  her  modesty  greatly 
eased  their  intercourse.  They  had  been  for  several 
days  husband  and  wife,  but  there  was  still  a  certain 
stiffness  and  reserve  in  their  relations.  This  disap- 
peared after  Lucy  was  obliged  in  broad  daylight  to 
submit  her  tortured  body  to  his  ministrations.  In  this 
new  camaraderie  she  was  soon  laughing  over  her  mis- 
adventure; whilst  John  acted  clumsily  as  lady's  maid. 

Two  days  afterwards  they  were  further  drawn  to- 
gether by  a  thrill  of  terror.  The  region  having  been 
temporarily  depopulated  by  Masai  raids,  wild  beasts  — 
lions,  leopards,  hyenas  —  had  been  emboldened  in  their 
attacks.  John's  camping  places  were  encircled  each 
evening  by  a  hedge  of  thorns,  and  the  porters  kept  up 
—  or  were  supposed  to  keep  up  —  blazing  fires.  But 


io6      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

one  night  in  the  small  hours  the  tired  sentries  fell 
asleep,  the  fire  in  front  of  the  tent  died  down,  a  lion 
sprang  the  hedge,  crunched  the  sentry's  skull,  and 
tore  at  their  tent  doorway  with  his  claws  —  attracted 
by  the  smell  of  the  donkeys  tethered  behind.  His  hor- 
rible snarls  and  growls  and  the  outcry  of  the  awakened 
men  roused  John  and  Lucy.  In  their  movements  they 
knocked  over  camp  washstand  and  table  and  could  not 
find  the  matches  or  the  lantern.  John  was  uncertain 
where  to  fire  even  when  he  had  found  his  loaded  rifle. 
He  dared  not  shoot  into  the  midst  of  the  growls,  lest 
the  bullet  should  kill  the  plunging  donkeys  or  strike 
one  of  his  men.  They  in  their  desperation  —  and,  to  do 
them  justice,  in  their  desire  to  save  the  white  man  and 
his  wife  —  were  tackling  the  lion  with  firebrands,  yet 
feared  to  shoot  his  huge  body  —  tangled  up  with  tent 
ropes  and  tent  flaps  —  lest  they  should  shoot  master  or 
mistress.  Lucy  swooned  across  the  bed  with  terror 
when  she  felt  the  lion's  body  pressed  against  the  thin 
canvas  of  the  tent  wall.  .  .  .  The  tent,  even,  seemed 
in  danger  of  collapsing  under  the  lion's  pressure,  as  he 
backed  on  to  it  to  face  the  men.  At  last,  fear  of  the 
fire  dislodged  him.  He  stood  or  rather  crouched 
against  a  pile  of  boxes  for  a  few  minutes ;  then  realiz- 
ing that  the  way  to  the  exit  was  clear,  he  bounded  to- 
wards it  over  the  dead  body  of  the  slain  porter.  But 
before  he  quitted  the  premises  he  seized  adroitly  one  of 
Lucy's  two  milch  goats  and,  breaking  its  neck,  trailed 
it  over  his  shoulders  and  plunged  down  a  ravine.  The 
men  followed  him  with  a  fusillade  of  shots  from  their 
Snider  rifles,  but  probably  in  the  darkness  all  went 
wide.  The  lion  remained  in  the  ravine  alternately 
crunching  and  growling  —  but  such  growling !  —  the 
English  verb  is  feeble  to  express  the  blood-curdling 
sound. 

Day  broke  at  last.     John  roused  himself,  detached 
gently  the  hysterically-clutching  hands  of  his  wife,  who 


UNGUJA  — AND  UP-COUNTRY  107 

alternately  implored  him  not  to  expose  himself  to  any 
more  danger  and  not  to  leave  her  to'  die  by  herself  in 
the  wilderness,  but  to  turn  back  with  her  that  very  day 
and  seek  for  some  safer  Mission  post  at  the  Coast  or  in 
Unguja  itself.  He  put  his  clothes  into  better  order, 
knelt  and  prayed  for  a  few  minutes :  then  tidied  the 
tent  space  a  little  and  overhauled  his  rifle.  Next, 
rummaging  for  ammunition  and  putting  it  handy  in 
his  side  pockets,  he  issued  from  the  tent,  carefully 
fastening  the  door  flaps  after  him.  He  questioned  the 
men  in  broken  Swahili  as  to  the  lion's  whereabouts. 
"  Chini,  Bwana,  hapa  karibu,  ndani  ya  bondee  .  .  . 
Below,  master,  near  here,  within  the  ravine,"  they 
answered;  and  the  lion,  hearing  the  raised  voices,  gave 
a  confirmatory  growl  which  reached  to  the  ears  of 
the  shaking  Lucy  in  the  tent.  She  arose,  her  teeth 
chattering  with  terror,  and  looked  out  through  a  slit  in 
the  tent  door.  She  saw  and  heard  John  call  for  the 
headman  and  guessed  that  he  was  marshalling  eight 
of  his  most  courageous  porters,  the  "  gunmen  "  of  the 
expedition,  to  sally  out  with  him  and  attack  the  lion. 

This  beast,  having  nearly  finished  the  goat,  had  no 
intention  of  leaving  the  neighbourhood  of  the  camp. 
He  intended  to  have  next,  one  by  one,  the  two  donkeys ; 
and  after  he  had  eaten  them,  the  humans.  The  ravine 
seemed  a  convenient  place  in  which  to  repose  till  he 
was  hungry  again.  .  .  . 

The  porters  read  the  lion's  mind  correctly :  "  He 
will  wait  there,  master,  till  we  are  breaking  camp  and 
then  attack  the  donkeys,  and  perhaps  the  one  with  Bibi 
on  his  back.  We  shall  never  get  him  in  such  a  favour- 
able position  again.  See!  He  is  down  there  below, 
looking  up  at  us.  He  can  scarcely  rush  up  this  side 
of  the  ravine.  .  .  ."  John  Baines  grasped  the  situa- 
tion; he  quickly  placed  himself  in  the  middle  of  the 
eight  braves,  who  knelt  on  one  knee  in  between  the  tree 
stems  on  the  edge  of  the  steep  descent.  All  at  the 


io8      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

word  "Fire!"  senfa  converging  volley  (which  deaf- 
ened Lucy  in  the  tent)  at  the  great  head  with  its  wide- 
open  yellow  eyes  .  .  .  and  as  the  smoke  cleared  away 
the  head  was  a  shapeless  mass  of  blood  and  brains  and 
the  lion  was  utterly  dead. 

A  shout  of  triumph  arose  from  the  elated  men,  and 
the  whole  force  of  the  caravan  —  thirty-two  men  with- 
out the  poor  wretch  who  had  been  killed  in  the  night  — 
went  tumbling  down  the  ravine  to  disembowel  the  lion 
and  cut  off  its  skin  for  "  Bwana  "  who  had  shown  him- 
self such  a  man  of  spirit. 

John  betook  himself  to  Lucy's  tent,  exultant.  He 
had  killed  a  lion!  He  almost  forgot  to  kneel  down 
and  send  up  a  thanksgiving  for  the  Divine  protection 
accorded  to  them.  Lucy  dried  her  eyes  and  at  last 
made  an  effort  to  dress  and  swallow  a  little  breakfast. 
As  her  nerves  were  shattered  by  the  "  close  call  "  they 
had  had  in  the  night,  and  as  a  burial  service  must  be 
held  over  the  dead  porter  and  the  loads  be  readjusted, 
John  announced  there  would  be  no  march  that  day. 

But  the  next  morning  Lucy  could  hardly  sit  her 
donkey.  And  by  ill-luck  the  caravan  had  only  just 
started  and  was  passing  through  more  ruined  banana 
plantations  —  another  charnel  house  of  the  last  Masai 
raid  —  when  it  was  abruptly  halted  by  a  shout  of 
"  Nyoka ! "  Owing  to  the  obstacles  of  the  felled 
banana  stems  it  was  difficult  to  diverge  from  the  nar- 
row track;  and,  barring  the  men's  way,  in  the  middle 
of  that  track  an  unusually  large  "  spitting  "  cobra  had 
erected  itself  on  the  stiffened  tail-third  of  its  length  and 
was  balancing  its  flattened,  expanded  body  to  and  fro, 
threatening  the  advance  of  the  caravan.  It  should 
have  been  a  comparatively  easy  matter  to  fell  it  with 
a  well-flung  banana  stem,  but  meanwhile  the  file  of 
porters  halted,  and  John,  impatient  to  find  out  the 
cause  of  the  halt,  urged  on  his  donkey  to  flounder 
through  the  vegetation  along  the  track  and  reach  the 


UNGUJA  — AND  UP-COUNTRY  109 

head  of  the  caravan.  Lucy's  donkey  was  so  devoted 
to  her  sister  ass  that  she  could  never  bear  to  be  sepa- 
rated from  her ;  so,  unchecked  by  Lucy's  limp  clutch  on 
the  reins,  she  hurried  forward.  But  when  she  saw  the 
swaying  cobra  she  bolted  off  to  the  left  into  the  banana 
tangle,  and  the  abrupt  action  flung  her  rider  off 
amongst  skulls  and  bones  and  rotting  vegetation. 

The  headman,  with  a  tent-pole,  hurled  adroitly  at 
the  aggressive  snake,  broke  its  back,  the  exasperated 
porters  rushed  forward  and  whacked  it  to  pulp  and 
then  threw  the  remains  far  from  the  path,  took  up  their 
loads  and  marched  forward,  hastening  to  leave  so  ill- 
omened  a  place.  The  cook  and  the  personal  attendant 
hurried  to  raise  the  unconscious,  slightly  stunned  Lucy 
from  her  horrible  surroundings  and  caught  the  donkey. 
The  caravan,  however,  had  to  be  halted  afresh.  Lucy 
was  far  too  ill  to  ride.  Yet  a  further  stay  could  hardly 
be  made  in  these  surroundings.  After  a  conference 
with  the  headman  it  was  decided  to  rig  up  a  "  machila  " 
or  travelling  hammock  out  of  blankets,  and  a  long 
pole,  and  to  march  on  a  mile  or  so  to  a  better  site 
for  a  camping  place,  and  there  await  the  lady's  recov- 
ery. .  .  . 

Poor  John !  It  required,  indeed,  patience  and  resig- 
nation to  the  fitful  ways  of  Providence  to  keep  up  heart 
against  this  succession  of  disasters.  The  loads  were 
readjusted  so  as  to  release  four  men  to  carry  the  in- 
valid ;  and  the  caravan  moved  on  silently,  in  low  spirits 
and  without  the  accustomed  song,  till  they  reached  a 
spot  which  satisfied  their  requirements  of  defensibility 
against  lions,  access  to  good  water;  shade;  and  no 
likelihood  of  biting  ants  or  snakes.  Such  a  place  was 
found  in  an  hour  or  two,  and  the  overburdened  porters 
gladly  heard  the  decision  to  remain  till  the  Bibi  was 
well  enough  to  travel. 

Lucy  when  put  to  bed  was  alternately  hysterical  and 
delirious.  She  was  suffering  more  from  nervous 


i  io      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

shocks  than  from  bodily  injuries,  though  several  of 
the  ant-bites  were  inclined  to  fester,  and  her  left  cheek, 
arm,  and  side  were  badly  bruised  from  the  fall  amongst 
the  bones.  John,  as  he  sat  and  watched  her  on  the 
camp  bed,  thought  what  cursed  luck  had  followed  him 
since  his  marriage.  He  had  twice  made  this  journey 
between  Hangodi  and  the  coast,  and  although  neither 
traversing  of  the  hundred-and-fifty  miles  had  been  pre- 
cisely an  agreeable  picnic,  there  had  not  occurred  any 
really  tragical  incidents  that  he  remembered.  Going 
first  to  Hangodi,  nine  months  ago,  the  Masai  raids 
had  not  taken  place;  and  on  his  coast  ward  journey  a 
month  previously  his  guide  must  have  taken  him  along 
a  different  path.  Thus  they  had  avoided  these  ruined 
villages  with  their  rotting  remains  of  massacres.  He 
had  often  heard  lions  roar  and  seen  snakes  gliding 
from  the  path,  and  had  crossed  with  a  hop  and  a 
jump  swarms  of  the  dreaded  "  siafu."  It  was  com- 
mon knowledge  that  some  Arab  daus  were  infested 
with  bugs.  But  none  of  these  terrors  had  been  ob- 
vious on  his  previous  journeys,  nor  had  there  been  such 
a  scarcity  of  drinking  water.  It  really  seemed  as 
though  Divine  Providence  for  some  mysterious  ends 
was  to  crowd  all  the  dangers  and  disagreeables  of  an 
African  safari  into  Lucy's  wedding  tour. 

A  talk  with  the  headman  helped  to  clear  things  up 
and  settle  plans.  They  were,  at  this  new  camp  —  by 
contrast  with  the  others  a  very  pleasant  and  salubrious 
place  —  about  sixty  miles  from  Hangodi  and  about 
fifty  from  the  Evangelical  Missionary  Society's  station 
of  Mpwapwa.  Here  there  lived  a  famous  medical 
missionary.  If  a  message  were  sent  to  him  by  fast 
runners  he  might  reach  them  in  four  or  five  days  with 
advice  and  medicines.  .  .  . 

Two  of  the  swiftest  porters  of  the  safari  were  chosen 
to  run  through  the  tolerably  safe  Usagara  country  with 
a  letter,  with  calico  bound  round  them  for  food  pur- 


UNGUJA  — AND  UP-COUNTRY  in 

chase  and  a  bag  of  rice  tied  to  each  man's  girdle. 
John's  revolver  was  lent  to  the  more  experienced  of 
the  two  as  some  protection  against  wild  beasts  or  law- 
less men.  They  were  promised  a  present  if  they  did 
the  journey  in  two  days. 

***** 

There  was  nothing  for  it  then  but  to  keep  Lucy  well- 
nourished  with  broth  made  from  tinned  foods  and  beef- 
extract.  The  porter  who  had  let  drop  the  case  of  cider 
and  had  conceived  an  attachment  for  his  mistress  out 
of  pity  and  remorse,  set  a  snare  one  day  and  caught  a 
guinea-fowl.  This  made  an  excellent  nourishing  soup. 
Another  porter  found  a  clutch  of  guinea-fowl's  eggs. 
There  was  one  remaining  milch  goat  which  yielded 
about  a  pint  of  milk  daily. 

With  such  resources  as  these  John  strove  to  prepare 
an  invalid  diet  which  could  be  administered  by  spoon- 
fuls to  a  patient  with  no  appetite  and  poor  vitality. 
He  had  a  small  medicine-case  of  drugs,  but  knew  not 
what  to  prescribe  for  nervous  exhaustion.  He  scarcely 
left  the  vicinity  of  the  tent  during  the  day-time,  and 
slept  fully-dressed  at  night  in  a  deck-chair  close  to 
Lucy's  camp  bedstead. 

At  the  end  of  the  fifth  day  the  medical  missionary 
arrived  on  a  riding  donkey  with  John's  messengers, 
and  six  porters  of  his  own  carrying  a  comfortable 
travelling  hammock.  He  diagnosed  the  case  and  took 
a  cheerful  view  of  it,  but  advised  their  setting  out  next 
day  with  him  and  attempting  by  forced  marches  to 
reach  his  station  —  fifty  miles  away  —  in  two  days. 
At  Mpwapwa  Lucy  would  be  nursed  back  to  health 
by  his  wife,  and  when  she  was  fit  for  more  African 
travel  she  should  be  sent  on  to  Hangodi. 
***** 

Six  weeks  afterwards  she  reached  her  husband's 
station  in  Ulunga,  completely  restored  to  health.  The 
cool  dry  season  had  set  in;  the  country  she  traversed 


H2      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

was  elevated,  much  wooded,  picturesque  hill-and-dale 
threaded  with  numerous  small  streams,  and  her  travel- 
ling escort,  the  medical  missionary,  was  an  interesting 
man  with  a  well-stored  mind  who  could  explain  much 
that  she  wanted  to  know. 

On  her  arrival  at  Hangodi  she  found  Ann  Jamblin 
installed  as  a  potent  force  in  several  departments  of 
the  station  economy,  the  real  mistress  of  the  com- 
munity. She  had  come  up  from  the  coast  in  the  safari 
of  Mrs.  Ewart  Stott.  The  marches  had  been  well 
regulated,  the  camping  places  well  chosen,  the  wild 
beasts  had  not  annoyed  them,  and  they  had  avoided 
the  waterless  tract.  Ann  was  prompt  to  infer  that 
Lucy  had  made  far  too  much  fuss  over  the  petty  dis- 
comforts of  African  travel,  and  Lucy  began  to  take 
refuge  in  a  proud  silence  —  which  one's  persecutors 
call  "  sulks  " —  under  Ann's  gibes  and  obliquely  slight- 
ing remarks. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

LETTERS    TO    AND    FRO 

From  Lady  Silchester  to  Captain  Brentham. 

Englefield  House, 

July  12,  1887. 

DEAR  ROGER  — 
The  great  event  took  place  three  weeks  ago 
and  I  am  just  allowed  to  leave  my  bed  and  lie  on  a 
couch  for  a  few  hours  every  day  —  in  my  boudoir. 
Here  I  can  wile  away  the  time  by  writing  letters. 

It  is  a  boy,  so  Francis  ought  to  be  in  the  seventh 
heaven  of  happiness  as  he  now  has  a  direct  heir  for 
the  succession.  Ought  to  be,  but  somehow  isn't. 
Since  I  began  to  get  better  and  take  notice  he  does  not 
seem  as  exuberant  as  I  expected.  He  isn't  well.  I 
have  a  sort  of  idea  he  had  a  fainting  fit  in  the  House 
of  Lords  just  when  my  crisis  was  coming  on  and  that 
they  kept  it  back  from  me.  But  I  saw  an  allusion  to 
it  in  an  old  Times  which  had  somehow  found  its  way 
into  my  sitting-room. 

The  infant  is  to  be  named  James  Francis  Addington 
for  ancestral  reasons.  I  do  not  feel  energetic  enough 
to  contest.  I  should  have  preferred  one  Christian 
name  only  —  a  multitude  of  names  is  so  demode  and 
must  be  so  confusing  to  the  recording  angels  who  don't 
recognize  surnames.  I  wanted  something  a  little  baf- 
fling and  out  of  the  common  such  as  Clitheroe  or  Passa- 
vant.  Clitheroe  is  not  the  name  of  any  relation,  but 
I  liked  its  sound  —  like  the  wind  in  the  reeds,  don't 


ii4      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

you  think  ?  —  and  it  would  have  been  a  new  departure. 

Little  Clithy  looks  rather  wizen  as  he  lies  asleep  in 
his  bassinette,  but  at  his  age  most  infants  seem  in- 
credibly old  and  cynical,  as  though  they  were  just  fin- 
ishing some  life  cycle  and  were  peevish  at  beginning 
another. 

Of  course,  Clitheroe's  coming  has  quite  ruled  me  out 
of  the  Jubilee  festivities.  Suzanne  Feenix  has  been 
doing  all  the  running,  and  quietly  pushing  her  hus- 
band whilst  I  have  been  unable  to  secure  any  advance- 
ment for  mine,  who  now  seems  quite  lacking  in  ambi- 
tion. Suzanne,  by  the  bye,  I' on  dit  tres  toquee  of  an- 
other good-looking  African  explorer,  a  rival  of  yours 
from  West  Africa.  A  pity  you  did  not  make  her 
acquaintance  —  as  I  advised  you  to  do  —  before  you 
left.  She  has  any  amount  of  influence  with  Lord  W. 

How  is  the  missionaryess  ?  I  am  glad  she  was 
safely  married  to  her  missionary  and  withdrew  her- 
self into  the  interior.  I  feared  otherwise  there  was 
going  to  be  another  entanglement :  for  I  don't  believe 
in  the  least  you  were  a  Galahad  and  faithful  only  to 
my  memory  in  the  days  when  we  played  at  being  en- 
gaged. I  don't  see  why  I  should  be  specially  inter- 
ested in  this  young  woman  because  she  came  from 
Aldermaston  and  her  father  is  one  of  our  tenants. 
.  .  .  However,  when  I  can  once  more  ride  I'll  go  over 
and  look  her  people  up  and  report  on  them.  But  I 
only  hope  you  won't  turn  her  head  by  taking  all  this 
interest  in  her  affairs.  So  like  you!  And  to  think 
you  once  reproached  me  for  inconstancy ! 

All  the  same,  dear  Roger,  I  do  miss  you  —  dread- 
fully. Francis  will  keep  up  the  grand  manner  and 
won't  tell  me  any  cabinet  secrets.  My  brothers  and 
sisters  don't  interest  me,  mother  is  too  anxious  about 
father's  affairs  to  leave  him  for  long,  and  when  she 
is  here  I  am  nervous  about  discussing  them  for  fear 
they  may  want  to  borrow  money  from  Francis. 


LETTERS  TO  AND  FRO  115 

I  have  sent  Maud  an  invitation  because  she  reminds 
me  faintly  of  you.  .  .  . 

SIBYL. 


From  Mrs.  Josling  to  Mrs.  John  Baines. 

Church  Farm 
.    Aldermaston 
July  30  (1887) 

My  darling  girl 

Father  and  me  were  so  releaved  at  getting  your  let- 
ter ten  days  ago  saying  you  had  reached  Unguja  safe 
and  sound  and  had  just  been  married  to  John  Baines 
by  the  Consul  and  at  the  Cathedral.  It  sounded  quite 
grand  being  married  twice,  and  I  only  hope  youll  be 
happy. 

I  went  over  to  see  Mrs.  Baines  at  Tilehurst  taking 
your  letter  with  me  but  was  receaved  none  too  gra- 
ciously. It  seems  John  had  not  written  to  his  parents 
to  say  he  was  married  or  even  that  he  but  I  suppose 
he  hadent  time  before  being  so  busy  over  his  prepera- 
tions  for  starting  up  country. 

Well  my  darling  we  both  wishes  you  every  happi- 
ness. Your  letter  dident  tell  us  much  but  I  suppose 
you  were  too  busy  having  to  start  away  on  a  ship  the 
next  morning.  We  both  send  our  humble  thanks  to 
Captain  Brentham  for  looking  after  you  on  the  voyage. 
Lady  Silchester  has  had  her  baby  —  in  the  middle  of 
last  June.  Father  and  me  drove  over  last  week  to 
pay  our  respecs  and  make  inquiries.  His  lordship 
himself  came  out  to  see  and  was  nice  as  he  always  is. 
He's  very  like  his  poor  mother  and  she  was  always 
the  lady  and  spoke  as  nice  to  her  servants  as  to  her 
titled  friends.  Well  Lord  Silchester  rang  for  the 
nurse  and  baby  so  as  we  might  see  it.  It  looked  to  me 


ii6      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

a  poor  little  antique  thing  but  of  course  I  dident  say 
so.  It's  been  christened  James  after  his  Lordship's 
father  but  they  say  as  her  Ladyship  wanted  some  other 
name  more  romantic  like  She  came  in  from  the  gar- 
den as  we  were  leaving  and  gave  herself  such  airs 
I  thought  but  Father  says  she's  a  rare  piece  for  good 
looks  and  we  all  ought  to  be  grateful  to  her  for  giving 
an  heir  to  the  estate  to  keep  out  the  Australian  cousin 
who  might  have-fevvle  revolutionary  ideas  about  farm- 
ing. She  ast  after  you  a  bit  sarcastic  like  I  thought. 
She  says  I  hear  your  daughter  flirted  dred fully  with 
my  cousin  Captain  Brentham  on  the  way  out.  I 
couldent  help  saying  I  dident  believe  it.  My  daugh- 
ter I  said  would  never  be  a  flirt  it  wasnt  in  your  na- 
ture. I  felt  so  put  out  but  his  Lordship  tried  to  make 
it  come  right  by  saying  Her  Ladyship  musnt  judge 
others  by  herself  and  that  he  quite  believed  me.  Weve 
had  a  good  hay  crop  and  the  wheat  and  root  crops 
promises  well.  So  Father's  in  rare  good  humour  and 
says  after  harvest  he's  going  to  take  us  all  to  the  sea- 
side Bournemouth  or  Southsea.  Clara  and  Mary's 
both  well.  They  never  ail  as  you  kno.  Young  Mar- 
den  of  Overeaston  is  paying  Clara  some  attention. 
Leastways  he  drops  in  to  Sunday  supper  pretty  often. 
We  all  send  our  love  and  I  hope  with  all  my  hart 
you  will  be  happy  and  continu  well.  I  shall  go  on 
being  anxious  about  you  till  you  come  back.  Praps 
the  Primitives  will  give  John  a  call  after  he's  done  his 
bit  of  missionary  work  and  youll  be  able  to  live  in  Eng- 
land close  to  us.  I  shant  be  happy  till  this  comes  to 
pass. 

Your  loving  mother 

Clara  Josling 


LETTERS  TO  AND  FRO  117 

From  Mrs.  Baines  to  her  son  John. 

Tilehurst, 

October  14,  1887. 
MY  DEAR  SON, — 

I  suppose  a  mother  must  expect  to  come  off  second 
best  when  her  son  marries  and  I  ought  to  think  myself 
lucky  to  hear  from  you  once  a  year.  But  I  confess  I 
was  put  out  in  the  summer  only  to  get  news  of  you 
through  Lucy's  mother.  However,  your  letter  written 
August  3,  after  Lucy  had  joined  you  at  Hangodi,  came 
to  hand  a  few  days  ago.  You  must  have  had  a  terrible 
time  getting  her  up-country.  She  seems  so  feckless 
and  born  to  trouble.  As  though  wild  beasts  and  acci- 
dents sought  her  out. 

I've  just  had  a  line  from  Ann  Jamblin.  She's  got 
her  head  screwed  on  the  right  way.  She  left  a  month 
after  Lucy  and  yet  reached  your  station  nearly  as  soon 
as  you  did.  She  didn't  need  to  hang  about  that  place 
—  I  can't  spell  its  name  —  where  you  got  married, 
and,  she  travelled  up-country,  she  says,  in  record  time 
with  a  missionary  lady,  a  Mrs.  Stott.  She  didn't  fall 
off  her  donkey  or  have  a  lion  in  her  tent  or  get  ants 
all  over  her  or  turn  sick  every  few  weeks.  Nor  yet 
have  herself  looked  after  by  free-thinking  captains  on 
the  voyage  out.  But  there.  You've  made  your  bed 
as  the  saying  is  and  you  must  lie  on  it.  It's  far  from 
my  wish  to  come  between  husband  and  wife,  and  I'm 
glad  Ann's  gone  to  your  station.  She'll  have  a  steady- 
ing influence  on  Lucy  and  be  a  great  comfort  to  you 
and  your  companions.  I  suppose  by  now  she's  mar- 
ried to  your  friend  Anderson.  If  so,  he'll  have  got  a 
good  wife  and  her  bit  of  money  will  be  a  help. 

Father's  as  well  as  he's  ever  likely  to  be.  He  suffers 
from  brash,  a  sure  sign  of  overeating. 

Sister  Simpson  is  going  to  marry  Brother  Wilkins, 
the  sidesman  of  our  Reading  Chapel.  At  present  she's 


ii8      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

suffering  from  boils,  but  hopes  to  be  well  enough  for 
the  marriage  next  month.  The  Bellinghams  at  Cross 
Corner,  Reading,  Bakers  and  Fancy  Confectioners,  are 
in  a  bad  way  —  going  bankrupt  they  say.  There's 
been  a  sad  scandal  about  Pastor  Brown  at  Bewdly 
wanting  to  marry  his  deceased  wife's  sister.  It's  for- 
bidden I  know  in  Holy  Writ,  though  at  time  of  writ- 
ing I  can't  remember  where,  but  see  Leviticus  xviii. 
and 'xx.  Emily  Langhorn  has  gone  to  London  to  learn 
dressmaking.  Time  she  did  and  good  behaviour  like- 
wise. I  never  listen  to  scandal,  otherwise  I  should 
say  it  was  all  on  account  of  her  goings  on  with  young 
Gilchrist.  She  took  it  very  hard  when  he  suddenly 
married  Priscilla  Lamb  of  Lamb's  Boot  Emporium, 
Abbey  Road,  Reading.  I'm  very  glad  I  wouldn't  have 
her  here  to  the  Dorcas  meetings.  She'd  got  her  eye 
on  you,  I'm  pretty  sure.  Sam  Gildersleeves  and  Polly 
Scatcherd's  got  married,  just  in  time  it  seems,  to  save 
her  good  name.  People  was  beginning  to  cut  her. 
Clara  Josling,  your  wife's  sister,  is  engaged  to  young 
Marden,  a  good-for-nothing  cricketer.  Plays  with  his 
brother  and  friends  on  Sunday  afternoons.  But  I 
suppose  you  won't  think  the  worse  of  him  for  that, 
now  you've  come  under  Lucy's  influence.  But  oh  what 
wickedness  is  coming  on  the  world.  Well,  it  can't 
last  much  longer.  The  vials  of  the  Almighty's  wrath 
are  about  to  be  opened  and  the  Last  Day  is  at  hand  — 
I  feel  and  hope.  I've  advised  your  father  to  spend 
no  more  money  on  repairs  at  the  Manufactory  —  It 
will  last  our  time. 

Meanwhile  may  God  have  you  in  his  holy  keeping. 
Father  sends  love.  He's  taken  up  with  this  new  drink 
Zoedone  and  expects  to  make  a  lot  of  money  out  of  it. 
Money,  money,  money  and  eat,  eat,  eat  is  all  he  thinks 
about.  Still,  that's  better  than  breaking  the  Sabbath 
and  running  after  strange  women,  which  is  what  most 
of  his  neighbours  is  doing.  And  as  to  the  women,  it's 


LETTERS  TO  AND  FRO  119 

dress,  dress,  dress  and  play  acting.  Mrs.  Garrett's 
bustle  was  right  down  shocking  last  Sunday.  I 
couldn't  keep  my  eyes  off  it  during  Chapel.  They've 
been  making  so  much  money  lately  out  of  sanding 
the  sugar  and  selling  dried  tea-leaves  for  Best  Family 
Blend  Afternoon  tea  that  they  don't  know  how  to 
spend  it,  so  Mrs.  G.  has  begun  to  dress  fashionable  — 
at  her  age  too  —  and  Mr.  G.  goes  to  St.  Michael's  in- 
stead of  coming  to  Salem  chapel  where  his  parents 
worshipped  before  him.  And  as  to  this  play  acting, 
its  one  of  the  signs  of  the  times.  They've  opened  a 
theatre  at  Reading  and  have  afternoon  performances. — 
Several  of  our  Tilehurst  folk  have  been  seen  there  and 
Pastor  Mullins  spoke  about  it  in  last  Sunday's  ser- 
mon. 

Your  loving  mother, 

SARAH  BAINES. 

From  Mrs.  Spencer  Bazzard  to  Mr.  Bennet  Molyneux, 
Foreign  Office. 

H.B.M.  Vice-Consulate, 
Unguja, 

Novr.  i,  1887. 

DEAR  MR.  MOLYNEUX, — 

When  am  I  to  address  you  as  "  Sir  Bennet  "  ?  —  as 
it  ought  to  be,  if  I  dare  express  my  thoughts.  We 
look  in  each  Honours'  list  expecting  it.  Spencer  is 
quite  bitter  on  the  subject,  but  I  tell  him  "  comparisons 
are  odious."  At  any  rate  I  won't  repeat  his  indiscre- 
tions. 

We  are  all  wondering  here  when  Sir  James  Eccles  is 
returning.  I  have  not  yet  had  the  privilege  of  seeing 
him  and  can  only  take  Spencer's  opinions  for  guide. 
In  Spencer's  mind  he  is  well-nigh  irreplaceable.  Spen- 
cer feels  it  would  be  little  less  than  disastrous  to  place 


120      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

the  control  of  Ungujan  affairs  in  the  hands  of  any 
younger  or  less  experienced  man.  With  Sir  James 
Eccles  the  Germans  will  try  no  nonsense.  They  might 
even  renounce  their  protectorate  in  despair  if  he  were 
to  return  and  had  the  influence  of  his  Government  be- 
hind him.  Whereas  with  a  weaker  man,  or  even  with 
one  of  no  authority,  merely  an  "  acting  "  Consul-Gen- 
eral, they  may  go  to  any  lengths.  I  am  foolish  enough 
about  my  Husband  to  think  —  if  there  must  be  a  stop- 
gap —  that  he  would  be  better  than  —  well,  than  the 
present  Acting  Consul-General.  Spencer  thoroughly 
distrusts  the  Germans  and  refuses  even  to  learn  their 
ugly  language ;  whereas  C-p-n  B.  is  much  too  friendly 
with  them  and  has  gone  to  the  length  of  saying  we 
must  not  play  the  dog  in  the  manger  over  Africa.  It 
seems  there  have  been  great  German  African  explorers 
as  well  as  English,  and  Spencer's  colleague  thinks  it 
rather  hard  they  should  not  have  colonies  as  well  as 
we.  Not  knowing  your  own  views  I  hesitate  to  ex- 
press mine.  And  I  should  not  be  so  presumptuous  as 
to  ask  for  any  guidance  or  any  answer  even  to  this 
letter.  I  dare  say  if  you  think  Spencer  is  to  have  more 
responsibility  and  initiative  in  the  future  you  will  pri- 
vately instruct  him  as  to  the  policy  of  your  depart- 
ment. 

That  will  not  help  me  much,  for  Spencer,  where  offi- 
cial correspondence  is  concerned,  is  as  close  as  —  I 
can't  think  of  a  parallel!  I  mean,  he  won't  tell  me 
anything.  Not  that  I  am  inquisitive.  But  I  do  want 
to  be  a  help  to  him,  and  I  also  believe  in  the  education 
of  women.  I  should  like  to  know  all  about  Africa! 
But  I  also  know  your  views  —  though  they  shock  me. 
If  I  may  judge  from  our  conversations  on  that  never- 
to-be-forgotten  Saturday  till  Monday  —  last  Easter  — 
when  Mrs.  Molyneux  was  good  enough  to  ask  me 

down  to  Spilsbury You  think  Woman  should 

confine  herself  to  superintending  the  household  and  her 


LETTERS  TO  AND  FRO  121 

husband's  comfort,  to  dressing  well,  and  should  not 
concern  herself  with  politics.  You  may  be  right. 
And  yet  there  are  moments  in  which  I  rebel  against 
these  prescriptions.  It  may  have  been  my  bringing-up. 
My  dear  father,  an  officer  in  the  Navy,  died  when  I 
was  very  young,  and  darling  mother  brought  me  up 
with  perhaps  too  much  modern  liberality.  She  enter- 
tained considerably  —  in  a  modest  way,  of  course  — 
at  our  house  in  North  Kensington,  and  I  was  accus- 
tomed therefore  from  girlhood  to  meet  with  many 
different  types  of  men  and  women  —  some  of  them 
widely  travelled  —  and  to  hear  a  great  variety  of  opin- 
ions. 

Here,  however,  when  I  have  attended  to  the  affairs 
of  our  household  —  a  small  one,  since  we  no  longer 
live  in  the  big  Consulate  —  and  have  paid  an  occa- 
sional visit  to  some  other  Consul's  wife  or  the  nicer 
among  the  missionary  women,  I  give  myself  up  to  the 
study  of  Swahili,  the  local  language.  Spencer,  who 
is  strong  in  fifty  things  where  I  am  weak  or  totally 
wanting,  is  not  absolutely  of  the  first  quality  as  a 
linguist,  while  I  seem  to  have  rather  a  gift  that  way. 
I  am  much  complimented  on  my  French,  and  although 
I  dislike  German  I  force  myself  to  speak  it.  I  can 
now  make  myself  understood  in  what  Spence  calls  the 
"  dam  "  lingo  of  the  natives.  And  if  I  told  you  I  was 
also  grappling  with  Hindustani  I  am  afraid  you  would 
class  me  unfavourably  with  your  pet  aversion,  a  "  blue 
stocking  " ! 

But  I  will  defy  your  bad  opinion.  I  am  determined 
to  fit  myself  for  Spencer's  promotion  which  must 
surely  come  in  time,  especially  as  we  can  both  stand 
the  climate  fairly  well.  I  have  only  been  down  once 
with  fever  since  I  came  out,  and  Spence  sets  malaria 
at  defiance  with  cocktails  and  an  occasional  stiff  whisky 
peg.  Between  us  before  long  we  ought  to  know  all 
that  is  worth  knowing  at  Unguja.  And  Spence  is  so 


122      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

popular  with  the  natives.  They  instinctively  look  up 
to  a  strong  man. 

As  to  the  missionaries  they  simply  swarm  on  the 
island  and  the  mainland.  Some  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land ones  are  quite  nice  and  are  really  gentlemen  and 
ladies.  And  there  are  one  or  two  adorable  old  priests 
in  the  French  Mission  who  pay  me  pretty  compliments 
on  my  French  and  declare  I  must  have  learnt  it  in 
Paris.  But  there  are  also  some  awful  cranks.  There 
is  a  Mrs.  Stott  who  puts  in  an  appearance  once  in  a 
way  from  some  very  wild  part  of  the  interior  and  asks 
me  with  great  cheerfulness  if  I  am  saved,  or  if  I  love 
the  Lord.  It  is  wonderful  how  she  keeps  her  appear- 
ance, as  she  goes  about  without  a  sunshade  and  has 
been  tossed  several  times  by  rhinoceroses.  Her  vo- 
racity for  hymn  singing  is  extraordinary.  Perhaps  it 
acts  on  her  constitution  like  these  new  Swedish  gym- 
nastics. 

Quite  another  type  of  recruit  for  the  Nonconform- 
ist Missions  came  out  with  me  from  England  last 
spring.  A  National  School  mistress,  I  believe,  orig- 
inally. She  was  the  daughter  of  a  farmer  in  Lord 
Silchester's  country.  Some  thought  her  pretty,  but 
it  was  that  prettiness  which  soon  evaporates  under  a 
tropical  sun.  She  seemed  to  me  thoroughly  insipid 
and  had  not  even  that  faith  in  mission  work  which 
at  least  excuses  the  strange  proceedings  of  her  com- 
panions. As  soon  as  the  ship  started  she  put  herself 
under  the  wing  of  our  Acting  Consul-General  who  was 
not  slow  to  reciprocate.  They  carried  on  a  flirtation 
during  the  voyage  which  —  but  I  am  afraid  I  am  not 
very  modern  —  was  not  the  best  preparation  for  mar- 
rying a  Methodist  missionary  —  a  dreadful  gauche- 
looking  creature  who  came  to  claim  her  at  Unguja. 
However  a  woman  should  always  stand  by  women, 
so  I  did  the  best  I  could  for  her  when  they  were  mar- 
ried by  the  Acting  Consul-General. 


LETTERS  TO  AND  FRO  123 

That  important  personage  —  Is  he  a  friend  of  yours? 
If  so,  I  will  promise  to  see  nothing  but  good  in  him  — 
prefers  to  live  all  alone  in  Sir  James  Eccles'  house, 
where  Spencer  had  transferred  himself  after  Sir 
James's  departure.  We  had  proposed  joining  house- 
holds with  him,  and  I  was  quite  ready  to  have  made  a 
home  for  him  during  his  brief  tenure  of  the  post. 
But  apparently  he  preferred  my  room  to  my  company, 
so  of  course  I  did  not  press  my  offer.  He  entertains 
very  little  on  the  plea  that  he  is  too  much  occupied 
with  work  and  study. 

Well!  If  I  write  much  more  you  will  dismiss  me 
as  a  bore.  So  I  must  sign  myself, 

Yours  gratefully, 

EMILIA  BAZZARD. 

P.S.  I  expect  no  answer.  But  if  you  do  not  order 
me  to  the  contrary  I  shall  post  you  from  time  to  time  a 
budget  of  gossip  from  Unguja  in  the  hope  that  it  may 
prove  amusing. 

There  is  no  news  at  all  of  Stanley.  Emin,  they  say, 
is  still  holding  out.  Each  steamer  brings  more  and 
more  Germans,  to  Spencer's  great  disgust.  E.B. 

From  Captain  Brentham  to  his  sister  Maud. 

H.B.M.  Agency, 
Unguja, 

Deer,  i,  1887. 
DEAR  OLD  MAUD, — 

You  are  a  good  sort,  and  I  am  awfully  grateful  to 
you.  Your  letters  never  fail  me  each  month  as  the 
mail  comes  in,  and  you  send  me  just  the  papers  and 
books  I  like  to  see  in  my  isolation. 

I  have  been  here  over  six  months  and  am  getting 
rather  weary  of  the  office  work.  I  don't  suppose  there 
is  much  chance  of  my  being  promoted  to  the  principal 
post  if  Sir  James  Eccles  does  not  come  back.  It  would 


i24      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

be  too  rapid  a  promotion  and  excite  frightful  jealousy 
-  though  I  really  think  I  should  do  as  well  as  any 
one  else,  and  better  than  some.  My  Arabic  and  Per- 
sian are  both  useful  to  me  here,  and  I  have  worked  up 
Hindustani  and  mastered  Swahili  and  get  along  very 
well  with  the  Arabs  and  the  big  colony  of  British  In- 
dians. But  I  don't  feel  confident  about  F.O.  approval. 
All  these  affairs  pass  through  Bennet  Molyneux's 
hands,  and  he  does  not  like  me  for  some  reason,  prob- 
ably because  he's  an  obstinate  ass  and  hates  being  set 
right.  I  hoped  Lord  Silchester  would  have  pushed  me 
more,  but  according  to  Sibyl's  letters  he  seems  really 
ailing  and  to  care  about  little  besides  his  own  health. 
Your  account  of  your  visit  to  Englefield  last  summer 
amused  me  very  much.  Sibyl  has  a  good  deal  of  the 
cat  about  her,  but  I  quite  understand  from  the  very 
oppositeness  of  your  dispositions  you  might  get  on 
very  well  —  your  straightforwardness  and  her  guile. 
At  any  rate  though  I  am  a  little  sore  still  about  her 
throwing  me  over  for  Silchester,  I  am  ready  to  for- 
give her  if  she  is  nice  to  my  one  dear  sister. 

As  to  you,  I  never  properly  appreciated  you  till  I 
came  to  live  out  here.  If  I  could  only  get  a  settled 
position  I  think  I  should  ask  you  to  come  and  keep 
house  for  me.  I  daresay  I  shall  never  marry  —  the 
women  I  have  felt  drawn  to  have  always  married 
somebody  else.  It  would  do  father  good  if  he  had  to 
engage  a  housekeeper  and  a  curate.  He  throws  away 
far  too  much  of  the  money  he  ought  to  leave  some  day 
to  you  on  excavations  at  Silchester. 

Well,  as  I  say,  I  am  getting  rather  tired  of  the  office 
work  I  have  to  plough  through  day  after  day.  There 
is  endless  litigation  between  the  Hindu  merchants  and 
the  Arabs.  There  are  Slave  cases  every  week  and  fre- 
quent squabbles  with  the  French  Consulate  over  slaving 
ships  flying  the  French  flag.  And  although  I  have  a 


LETTERS  TO  AND  FRO  125 

*'  legal "  vice-consul  to  help  me,  his  decisions  are  some- 
times awfully  rotten  and  have  to  be  revised. 

I  wasn't  cut  out  for  office  work.  If  I  were  really 
Agent  and  Consul-General  it  would  be  different;  I 
might  take  more  interest  in  the  storms  .of  this  Unguja 
tea-cup.  And  I  should  of  course  be  properly  in  con- 
trol of  the  mainland  Vice-Consuls  who  at  present  seem 
to  me  to  waste  all  their  time  big  game  shooting  or  ill 
in  bed  with  fever  due  to  too  much  whisky.  But  as  I 
am  only  a  warming  pan  for  Eccles  or  some  new  man 
it  is  a  very  boring  life.  I  have  not  been  away  from 
this  little  island  once  since  I  came  out  in  May.  I  am 
therefore  impatient  to  go  over  to  my  proper  consular 
district  on  the  mainland,  and  thoroughly  explore  it. 
It  reaches  to  the  three  great  lakes  of  the  interior ! 

This  Vice-Consul  at  Unguja  is  a  queer  sort  of  per- 
son. He  was  called  to  the  bar  a  few  years  ago  - 
unless  he  is  personating  another  man !  But  his  knowl- 
edge of  Indian  law  is  nil  and  he  seems  to  have  no  in- 
tuition or  perception  of  where  the  truth  lies  between 
scores  of  perjured  witnesses.  He  is  unable  to  learn 
languages,  so  he  is  quite  at  the  mercy  of  the  court 
interpreters.  He  drinks  too  much  whisky,  has  an  un- 
pleasant mottled  complexion,  a  shaking  hand,  and  an 
uneasy  manner  with  me,  varying  from  deferential  to 
what  the  French  call  "  rogue."  His  wife  who  trav- 
elled out  with  me  is  by  no  means  stupid.  She  is  some- 
what the  golden-haired  adventuress  —  her  hair,  at 
least,  is  an  impossible  gold  except  near  the  roots  — 
her  complexion  is  obviously,  though  very  skilfully, 
made  up,  and  generally  she  has  a  sort  of  false  good 
looks  just  as  she  exhibits  a  false  good  nature.  Every 
now  and  then  one  catches  a  glimpse  of  the  tigress  fight- 
ing for  her  own  hand  (which  means  in  her  case,  her 
husband).  She  has  probably  been  a  governess  at  one 
time,  and  rumour  makes  her  the  daughter  of  a  navy 


126      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

paymaster's  widow  who  kept  a  boarding  house  in  Bays- 
water,  which  at  one  time  sheltered  Spencer  Bazzard 
when  he  was  down  on  his  luck.  He  married  her  — 
I  should  guess  —  to  pay  his  bill  for  board  and  lodg- 
ing. She  then  took  up  his  affairs  with  vigour  and 
actually  got  him  appointed  Legal  Vice-Consul  here. 
She  writes  letters  to  Bennet  Molyneux  —  sealed  with 
lavender  wax  and  a  dove  and  serpent  seal  —  I  see 
them  in  the  Mail  bag  —  flatters  him  up  I  expect,  and 
I  dare  say  deals  me  every  now  and  then  a  stab  in  the 
back.  Her  first  idea  when  we  came  out  was  to  fasci- 
nate me  and  take  up  the  position  of  lady  of  the  house 
at  the  Agency.  I  dare  say  she  would  have  run  it  far 
better  than  I  do  and  have  made  a  very  competent 
hostess.  But  the  inevitable  corollary  of  having  her 
detestable,  blotchy- faced  husband  as  my  commensal 
and  letting  her  boss  the  show  generally  was  too  much 
for  me,  and  I  had  to  ask  them  to  live  in  the  Vice-Consu- 
late hard  by  and  let  me  dwell  in  solitude  and  peace  in 
the  many-roomed  Agency.  My  maitre-d'hotel  is  Sir 
James's  admirable  Swahili  butler,  my  cook  is  a  Goanese 
—  and  first  rate  —  and  I  have  one  or  two  excellent 
Arab  servants.  Of  course  I  make  a  point  of  having 
the  Bazzards  frequently  to  dine  or  lunch,  and  I  ask  her 
to  receive  the  ladies  of  the  European  colony  at  any 
party  or  entertainment.  Nevertheless  I  have  made  an 
enemy.  Yet  she  would  be  intolerable  as  a  friend.  .  .  . 
The  poor  little  missionary  lady  you  ask  about  has, 
I  guess,  been  having  a  pretty  rough  time  of  it  up  coun- 
try. She  has  not  written  to  say  so :  I  only  gather  the 
impression  from  the  "  on  dits  "  which  circulate  here. 
I  do  not  like  to  show  too  much  interest  in  her  concerns 
because  such  interest  in  this  land  of  feverish  scandal 
might  be  so  easily  and  malevolently  misconstrued. 
Before  she  departed  from  Unguja  for  the  interior  I 
gathered  that  her  chief  anxiety  was  lest  her  mother 
should  think  her  unhappy,  and  mistaken  in  her  career 


LETTERS  TO  AND  FRO  127 

as  a  missionary.  Farleigh  is  not  so  very  far  from 
Aldermaston  (the  address  is  "  Mrs.  Josling,  Church 
Farm  ").  Perhaps  one  day  you  might  find  your  way 
there  and  have  a  friendly  talk  with  Lucy  Baines's 
mother  and  father,  and  intimate  that  I  am  —  as  a 
Consul  —  keeping  an  eye  on  the  welfare  and  safety 
of  their  daughter  and  son-in-law.  He  —  Baines  — 
seems  a  good-hearted  fellow,  but  quite  incapable  of 
appreciating  her  real  charm,  even  if  he  does  not  think 
it  wrong  for  a  missionary's  wife  to  have  charm.  She 
is  really  a  half-educated  country  girl,  with  a  fragile 
prettiness  which  will  soon  disappear  under  the  heat 
and  malarial  fever,  with  the  mind  of  an  unconscious 
poetess,  the  pathetic  naivete  of  a  wild  flower  which 
wilts  under  transplantation.  .  .  , 

I  mostly  like  the  missionaries  I  meet  out  here;  so 
you  need  not  mind  an  occasional  collection  of  Farleigh 
coppers  and  sixpennies  being  taken  up  on  their  account 
to  the  tune  of  From  Greenland's  Icy  Mountains,  etc. 
Our  religious  beliefs  do  not  tally;  but  I  do  admire  their 
self-sacrifice,  their  energy,  and  devotion.  They  are 
generally  specialists  in  some  one  direction  —  native 
languages,  folk-lore,  botany,  entomology,  photography, 
or  even,  as  in  Mrs.  Stott's  case,  the  making  of  plum 
cakes.  A  very  admirable  solace  to  the  soul,  or  — 
where  the  natives  are  concerned  —  means  of  conver- 
sion! 

***** 

Your  loving  brother, 

ROGER. 


CHAPTER  IX 

MISSION    LIFE 

LUCY  had  reached  her  husband's  station  in  the 
Ulunga  country  in  July,  1887,  at  the  height  of 
the  winter  season,  south  of  the  Equator.  The  cli- 
mate then  of  the  Ulunga  Hills  was  delightful;  dry, 
sparkling,  sunshiny  and  crisply  cold  at  nights.  Her 
health  mended  fast,  nor  did  she  begin  to  flag  again  till 
the  hot  weather  returned  in  October  and  the  height 
of  the  wet  season,  of  the  southern  summer,  made  it- 
self felt  in  December  and  January  by  torrential  rains, 
frightful  thunderstorms,  blazing  sunshine  and  the  at- 
mosphere of  a  Turkish  bath.  For  several  months 
after  her  arrival  she  made  renewed  and  spasmodic 
efforts  to  play  the  part  of  a  missionary's  wife,  to  share 
her  husband's  enthusiasm,  and  to  earn  her  living  — 
so  to  speak  —  by  her  contribution  of  effort.  If  she 
had  only  never  met  Brentham  and  if  only  Ann  Jam- 
blin  had  stopped  at  home!  She  could  not  but  admit 
the  change  in  John  was  remarkable.  He  was  less  and 
less  like  either  of  his  parents,  less  and  less  inclined  to 
dogmatize;  he  had  become  as  unselfish  as  such  a  self- 
absorbed,  unobservant  man  could  be.  Intensely  fond 
of  work,  especially  manual  work  —  carpentering, 
building,  gardening,  cutting  timber,  and  contriving 
ingenious  devices  to  secure  comfort  and  orderliness  — 
this  backwoods  life  suited  him  to  perfection.  He 
was  the  head  of  the  station,  the  principal  teacher  of 
the  boys  and  men,  the  leader  of  the  services  in  the 
chapel.  He  was  responsible  for  the  finances  and  gen- 
eral policy  of  the  Mission. 

128 


MISSION  LIFE  129 

Each  of  the  stations  of  this  Society  in  East  Africa 
was  a  little  self-governing  republic.  Once  a  year  dele- 
gates from  each  East  African  station  met  at  Mvita  or 
Lingani,  or  some  other  convenient  place,  and  conferred, 
agreed  perhaps  on  some  common  policy,  some  general 
line  of  conduct.  But  there  was  much  individual  free- 
dom of  action.  John,  for  example,  was  taking  up  a 
strong  line  against  the  Slave  Trade.  Since  the  disso- 
lution of  the  Sultan's  vague  rule  which  followed  the 
German  invasion,  the  Arab  slave  traders  had  revived 
their  slave  and  ivory  caravans  between  Tanganyika 
and  the  Zangian  coast  owing  to  the  great  demand  for 
labour  in  Madagascar  and  in  the  Persian  Gulf.  John 
had  obtained  such  influence  over  the  head  chief  of 
Ulunga  that  he  had  forbidden  the  Arabs  transit  through 
his  lands,  and  instead  of  selling  his  superfluous  young 
people  or  his  criminals  to  the  slave  traders  he  sent  them 
to  the  Mission  to  be  trained  in  rough  carpentry,  read- 
ing and  writing,  husbandry  and  so  forth.  The  very 
flourishing  trade  that  Anderson  carried  on  at  the  store 
made  the  Mission  prosperous  enough  occasionally  to 
subsidize  the  chiefs  and  reward  them  for  sending  their 
boys  and  girls  to  school  and  to  be  ostensibly  converted 
to  Christianity.  Some  black  Muslims  who  had  started 
teaching  boys  the  Koran  and  elements  of  Muhamma- 
danism  in  two  of  the  villages  were  expelled,  and  a 
resolute  war  was  made  by  John  on  the  witch  doctors 
of  the  tribe,  who  for  a  time  were  routed  before  the 
competition  of  Cockles'  Pills  and  the  other  invaluable 
patent  medicines  which  were  just  beginning  to  appear 
in  tabloid  form. 

Brother  Bayley's  department  was  more  especially  the 
study  of  the  native  language.  He  translated  simple 
prayers  and  hymns  and  passages  of  Scripture  into  the 
Kagulu  dialect  of  Ulunga  and  rendered  more  educa- 
tional literature  into  the  wider-spread  Swahili.  He 
had  a  small  printing-press  with  which  he  was  labouring 


1 30      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

to  put  his  translations  into  permanent  form;  and  be- 
sides this  took  a  prominent  part  in  the  boys'  educa- 
tion. 

His  personal  hobby  was  butterfly  and  beetle  catch- 
ing. He  devoted  his  small  amount  of  leisure  to  col- 
lecting these  insects  and  transmitting  them  to  an  agent 
in  London  to  sell  on  his  behalf.  In  this  way  he  made 
a  fluctuating  fifty  pounds  a  year,  which  was  a  pleasant 
addition  to  his  meagre  salary.  It  provided  him  with  a 
few  small  luxuries  and  enabled  him  to  send  a  present 
every  now  and  then  to  his  mother. 

Then  there  was  Ann  Jamblin,  of  Tilehurst,  a  school- 
fellow of  Lucy,  a  sturdy,  plump  young  woman  of  about 
twenty-seven,  with  a  dead-white  complexion,  a  thick 
skin,  black  hair,  black  eyebrows  and  hard  eyes  of  peb- 
ble brown.  She  had  actually  arrived  at  Hangodi  be- 
fore Lucy  herself,  though  she  started  out  from  home 
a  month  later,  being  of  that  exasperating  type  to  whom 
nothing  happens  in  the  same  ratio  as  to  other  people. 
She  could  never  be  run  over,  never  be  drowned  at  sea 
—  Lucy  thought  —  never  slip  on  a  piece  of  orange 
peel,  never  be  assaulted  in  a  railway  carriage.  Ann 
had  been  sent  out  by  the  Mission  Board  to  be  a  bride 
for  Brother  Anderson  (on  a  discreet  suggestion  of 
John's,  who  thought  Anderson  a  little  inclined  to  look 
amorously  on  comely  negresses).  But  she  had  de- 
clined to  fulfil  the  bargain  when  she  arrived,  denied 
indeed  all  knowledge  of  such  an  engagement,  said  she 
didn't  want  to  marry  any  one:  only  to  do  the  Lord's 
work  and  help  all  round.  Her  refusal  had  been  taken 
philosophically  by  the  person  most  concerned,  on  ac- 
count of  her  unattractive  appearance;  and  was  further 
softened  by  her  practical  usefulness  as  an  independent 
member  of  the  Mission.  She  house-kept  for  the  little 
community,  attended  to  the  poultry,  goats  and  sheep, 
did  much  of  the  cooking,  made  the  bread,  the  cakes,  the 
puddings;  darned  the  socks,  mended  the  linen,  and 


MISSION  LIFE  131 

taught  the  native  girls  the  simple  arts  of  British  do- 
mestic life.  She  dressed  with  little  regard  to  embellish- 
ment of  the  person,  but  with  much  attention  to  neat- 
ness and  mosquito  bites.  Her  humour  was  rough  and 
her  tongue  lashed  every  one  in  turn.  She  had  that 
unassailable  independence  of  manner  which  is  imparted 
by  the  possession  of  a  private  income  of  one  hundred 
pounds  a  year  and  the  knowledge  that  her  martyrdom 
was  voluntary  and  self-sought.  Hardly  ever  ill  her- 
self, she  nursed  every  one  that  was  with  almost  pro- 
fessional ability. 

Lucy  secretly  detested  her,  for  she  was  always 
gibing  at  John's  wife  for  being  moony  and  unprac- 
tical, for  her  "  aesthetic  tastes,"  such  as  liking  flowers 
on  the  table  at  meals ;  for  succumbing  quickly  to  head- 
aches and  megrims  generally,  and  especially  for  the 
ease  with  which  she  was  humbugged  by  the  big  girls 
of  her  school  classes.  Ann  would  also  gird  at  her  for 
lack  of  religious  zeal.  Ann  herself  took  an  aggres- 
sively hearty  part  in  prayers  and  hymn-singing,  and 
mastered  the  harmonium  which  had  proved  unplayable 
by  Lucy.  Ann  even  tried  making  her  own  translations 
of  her  favourite  canticles  into  the  native  language  and 
was  not  deterred  or  discouraged  because  in  her  first 
attempts  and  through  the  malice  of  her  girl  interpreters 
she  had  been  misled  into  rendering  the  most  sacred 
phrases  and  symbolism  by  gross  obscenities.  The  de- 
light of  shouting  out  these  improprieties  in  chapel  be- 
fore the  blandly  unconscious  missionaries,  when 
Brother  Bayley  was  laid  aside  by  fever,  attracted  large 
congregations. 

If  John  Baines  were  seriously  ill  with  a  malarial 
attack,  Ann  would  brush  Lucy  aside  as  unceremoni- 
ously as  she  ejected  her  from  the  harmonium  stool. 
She  would  take  complete  charge  of  the  sick  man,  re- 
duce the  fever,  and  make  the  broths  and  potions  which 
were  to  sustain  convalescence.  When  Lucy  herself 


132      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

was  ill,  Ann  would  either  diagnose  the  attack  as 
"  fancy  "  or  "  hysteria,"  or  a  touch  of  biliousness,  and 
cure  it  so  drastically  that  Lucy  made  haste  to  get  well 
in  order  to  withdraw  from  her  treatment. 

This  was  an  average  day  in  Lucy's  life  at  Hangodi 
in  the  first  year  of  her  stay  there 

6  a.  m.  Lucy  is  already  awake;  John  still  sleeping 
heavily.  Lucy  had  been  dreaming  she  was  back  at 
Aldermaston  or  else  voyaging  down  the  Red  Sea  with 
Brentham,  and  is  still  under  the  shock  of  disappoint- 
ment as  she  lies  gazing  up  at  the  dingy  cone  of  mos- 
quito net  suspended  over  their  bed  from  the  rat-haunted 
roof.  The  bedstead  is  a  broad  structure  —  the  Arab 
"  angareb  " —  an  oblong  wooden  frame  with  inter- 
laced strips  of  ox-hide.  On  this  foundation  has  been 
laid  a  lumpy  cork  mattress  with  well-marked  undula- 
tions. On  that  again  a  couple  of  musty  blankets  and 
a  sheet.  For  covering  there  is  another  sheet  and  a 
coverlet. 

Lucy,  hearing  the  awakening  bell  being  tolled,  nudges 
John,  who  is  still  snoring. 

Lucy:     "John!     The  first  bell  has  gone!  " 

John:  "  Wha'?  "  (Gurgle,  gurgle,  snore  cut  short, 

lips  smacked,  heavy  sighs. ) "  Wha'  ?  Time  to 

ger-up?  Or-right." 

He  tumbles  out  of  bed  in  his  disarranged  night-gown 
—  pai jamas  were  not  introduced  into  the  East  Africa 
Mission  till  1890.  In  doing  so  he  tears  the  mosquito 
curtain  with  his  toe-nails.  .  . 

A  native  servant  is  heard  filling  two  tin  baths  in  the 
adjoining  roomlet.  They  then  proceed  to  take  their 
baths  in  what  —  to  Lucy  —  is  disgusting  promiscuity. 
The  rest  of  the  toilet  is  summarily  proceeded  with. 
(As  John  is  fully  hirsute  there  is  no  shaving  to  be 
done.)  Then  to  avoid  remonstrance  from  her  hus- 
band Lucy  kneels  with  him  in  prayers  on  a  dusty  mat, 


MISSION  LIFE  133 

in  fear  all  the  time  some  scorpion  may  sting  her  ankles. 
One  did,  once. 

At  half -past  six  another  bell  goes  —  how  the  con- 
verts love  bell-ringing !  —  and  they  hurry  out  to  the 
Chapel  where  the  other  members  of  the  Mission  staff 
and  a  posse  of  native  boys  and  girls  meet  them.  More 
prayers,  a  psalm,  and  a  hymn  sung  lustily  but  dishar- 
moniously. 

Then  the  whites  adjourn  to  the  house  or  large  hut 
where  the  meals  of  the  community  are  served.  The 
dining-table  is  of  rough-hewn  planks  of  native  timber, 
and  on  either  side  of  it  there  are  similarly  rough  forms 
to  sit  on,  with  a  native  stool  at  either  end  of  the  table. 
The  breakfast  consists  of  porridge  and  milk,  the  por- 
ridge being  made  of  native  cereals  and  often  a  little 
bitter.  There  is  coarse  brown  bread  with  a  sour  taste 
as  it  is  made  with  fermented  palm  wine.  There  are 
butter  from  a  tin  —  rather  rancid  —  potted  salmon, 
and  bantams'  eggs  from  the  native  poultry,  so  under- 
boiled  that  they  run  out  over  the  plate  when  opened. 

John  asks  a  blessing  on  the  meal.  They  then  pro- 
ceed to  eat  it,  while  the  males  drink  with  some  noisi- 
ness the  tea  that  Ann  pours  out.  "  You  don't  seem 
to  have  much  appetite  this  morning,  Lucy,"  says  Ann 
of  malice  prepense:  "  Porridge  burnt  again?  What 
is  it?" 

"  Thank  you.  There  is  nothing  wrong  with  the 
porridge,  so  far  as  I  know.  I  am  simply  not  hun- 
gry." 

"  Ah !  Been  at  those  bananas  again.  They're  very 
sustaining.  But  you'll  never  be  well  if  you  eat  be- 
tween meals." 

"  /  eat  at  meals  and  between  'em,"  says  Brother 
Anderson,  "  and  I'm  glad  to  say  loss  of  appetite  don't 
never  trouble  me.  This  is  a  rare  climate  to  make  and 
keep  you  hungry." 


i34      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

Anderson  is  voracious  and  somewhat  lacking  in  table 
manners,  defects  atoned  for  by  his  being  an  unremit- 
ting worker  and  well  contented  with  his  lot  —  Eupep- 
tic, as  we  learnt  to  say  at  a  later  date.  But  he  keeps 
his  spoon  in  his  cup  and  holds  it  steady  with  a  black- 
rimmed  thumb  when  he  drinks.  He  also  helps  him- 
self to  butter  with  his  own  knife,  talks  with  his  mouth 
full,  and  never  masticates  behind  closed  lips  but  dis- 
plays the  process  without  self-consciousness.  Lucy, 
who  is  squeamish  about  such  things,  glances  at  him 
occasionally  with  scarcely  concealed  disgust.  Brother 
Bayley  eats  more  sparingly  and  divides  his  attention 
between  his  food  and  a  printed  vocabulary  of  Kisa- 
gara.  He  has  a  strong  predilection  for  reading  at 
meals,  which  ever  and  again  comes  under  the  lash  of 
Ann's  tongue.  She  does  not  consider  it  good  man- 
ners. 

John  himself  makes  a  hearty  breakfast,  but  glances 
occasionally  at  Lucy's  silent  abstemiousness.  At  last 
Ann,  the  housekeeper,  rises  after  Brothers  Bayley  and 
Anderson  have  left  the  table  for  their  work,  and  says 
to  Lucy :  "  Don't  sit  too  long  over  your  food  because 
I  want  Priscilla  and  Florence  to  clear  away,  wash  up 
and  then  come  to  me.  .  .  ." 

She  goes  out. 

"  Not  well,  Lucy,  this  morning?  "  says  John,  who  is 
beginning  to  despair  about  her  fitting  in  to  mission 
life.  The  conviction  which  he  often  repels  takes  him 
now  with  an  ache.  He  loves  the  work  himself,  not 
only  the  converting  these  savages  to  a  better  mode  of 
life,  but  the  unrealized  colonization  about  the  whole 
business,  the  planting  of  fruit  trees,  the  increase  of 
flocks  and  herds,  the  freedom  from  civilization's 
shackles  and  class  distinctions.  .  .  . 

"Oh  yes!  I'm  quite  well  ...  I  suppose.  Simply 
not  hungry.  I  daresay  I  shall  make  up  for  it  at  din- 
ner .  .  .  provided  Ann  leaves  me  alone  and  doesn't 


MISSION  LIFE  135 

nag  about  eating.  I  think  it's  such  bad  manners, 
observing  what  people  do  at  meal  times.  I  don't  com- 
ment on  her  big  appetite  or  on  Anderson's  disgusting 
way  of  eating.  .  .  ." 

"  She  means  very  well,"  replies  John,  wishing  to  be 
fair.  .  .  . 

"  I  daresay  she  does.  She'd  have  made  you  a 
much  better  wife  than  I.  If  I  die  in  my  next  attack 
of  fever,  you  ought  to  marry  her  .  .  .  /  shouldn't 
mind.  .  .  ." 

"  Now,  Lucy,  don't  say  such  dreadful  things.  You 
can't  think  how  they  hurt  me.  ..." 

At  this  moment  Priscilla  and  Florence  —  pronounc- 
ing their  imposed  baptismal  names  as  "  Pilisilla,"  and 
"  Filorency  "  in  a  loud  stage  conversation  they  are 
holding  together  to  conceal  the  fact  that  they  have 
rapidly  escheated  a  half-basin-full  of  sugar  —  come  in 
to  clear  away,  and  John  leads  Lucy  with  an  arm  round 
her  waist  back  to  their  own  quarters. 

"  Cheer  up,  old  girl !  You  haven't  had  fever  now 
for  three  months  and  you're  getting  your  good  looks 
back.  And  making  splendid  progress  with  your  teach- 
ing. .  .  .  You're  beginning  to  master  the  lan- 
guage. ..." 

It  is  eleven  o'clock  in  the  morning  and  the  Girls' 
School  at  Hangodi,  with  its  mud  walls  of  wattle  and 
daub  and  its  thatch  of  grass  and  palm  mid-ribs,  is  hot 
to  the  extent  of  eighty  degrees  Fahrenheit.  Despite 
the  open  door  (for  the  small  glass-paned  windows  are 
not  made  to  open)  the  atmosphere  is  close  and  redolent 
of  perspiring  Negroes.  Lucy  raises  her  eyes  from  her 
desk  and  looks  about  her  as  though  realizing  the  scene 
from  a  new  point  of  view,  without  illusion  or  kindly 
allowance.  At  the  end  of  the  School-house,  opposite 
to  the  teacher's  platform  and  desk,  is  the  entrance- 
door  of  heavy  planks  adzed  from  native  timber. 
Through  the  wide-open  doorway  can  be  seen  a  square 


136      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

of  sun-baked  red  clay  which  refracts  a  dazzling  flame- 
white  effulgence. 

When  the  eye  got  used  to  this  brilliancy  of  sunlight 
on  a  surface  polished  by  the  pattering  of  naked  feet,  it 
could  distinguish  rows  of  Eucalyptus  saplings,  and 
here  and  there  the  rich  green  of  a  native  shade-tree, 
together  with  part  of  a  red  brick  chapel  roofed  with 
corrugated  iron  and  several  thatched  houses  of  white- 
washed clay. 

On  the  walls  of  the  School  were  hung  a  map  of  the 
World  on  Mercator's  projection  and  a  map  of  Africa; 
a  large  scroll  with  elementary  illustrations  of  Natural 
History  —  typical  beasts,  birds,  reptiles,  fish  and  in- 
sects, of  sizes  as  disproportionate  as  the  inhabitants 
of  a  Noah's  Ark.  There  were  also  placards  with  arith- 
metical figures,  letters  of  the  alphabet  and  single  syl- 
lable combinations:  M  a,  ma;  b  a,  ba;  I  e,  le,  etc. 
Over  the  wall,  behind  the  teacher's  desk  and  above 
the  black-board,  was  a  long  strip  of  white  paper, 
printed  in  big  black  capitals:  MWAACHE  WA- 
TOTO  WANIKARIBU  ("Suffer  little  children  to 
come  unto  Me  ").  The  words  were  in  the  widely  un- 
derstood Swahili  language,  the  medium  through  which 
Lucy  endeavoured  with  many  difficulties  and  misun- 
derstandings to  impart  her  knowledge  to  her  semi- 
savage  pupils. 

A  lull  after  her  two  hours'  teaching  had  begun.  A 
Negro  woman  of  some  intelligence,  a  freed  slave  from 
Unguja  and  the  wife  of  "  Josaia  Birigizi  "  (Josiah 
Briggs)  the  interpreter,  was  talking  in  a  low  sing-song 
voice  with  the  little  girls,  practising  them  in  the  alpha- 
bet and  the  syllables  formed  by  consonant  and  vowel. 
The  class,  ranged  upon  rows  of  rough  forms  in  front 
of  the  teacher's  desk,  consisted  of  black  girls  of  all 
sizes,  from  little  children  to  young,  nubile  women ;  but 
they  were  separated  by  an  aisle  down  the  middle  of 
the  room  and  were  assorted  according  to  height  into 


MISSION  LIFE        ,  137 

two  categories,  "  A-big-geru "  and  "  A-%-geru," 
these  phrases  being  Bantu  corruptions  of  "  Big  girls," 
and  "  Little  girls." 

Although  nearly  if  not  quite  naked  when  at  home, 
here  on  the  Mission  premises  they  were  dressed  in 
short-sleeved  smocks  of  white  calico,  loose  from  the 
neck  downwards,  most  of  them  soiled  and  in  need  of 
washing.  The  girls  consequently  had  a  frowsy  look, 
somewhat  belied  by  their  glossy  faces  and  arms,  their 
brilliant  eyes,  and  dazzling  white  teeth.  The  smaller 
children  were  pretty  little  things  that  any  teacher  might 
have  petted,  but  most  of  the  bigger  girls  had  an  impu- 
dent look  and  an  ill-concealed  expression  of  over-fed 
idleness  tending  towards  imaginings  of  sensuality.  A 
critic  of  missionary  policy  in  those  days  would  have 
felt  inclined  to  put  these  bigger  girls  to  good,  hard, 
manual  labour  in  the  mornings  which  should  by  the 
afternoon  have  taken  the  sauciness  out  of  them;  and 
have  reserved  their  mental  education  for  the  afternoon, 
when  they  had  returned  from  brick-making  or  field 
hoeing. 

No  sooner  did  Lucy  relapse  into  silence  and  show 
signs  of  reverie  than  they  set  to  work  to  whisper  of 
their  love  affairs,  to  push  and  pull  one  another  about 
with  giggles  and  peevish  complaints;  or  else  to  let 
slates  fall  with  a  clatter  whilst  they  watched  with  in- 
terest the  flitting  of  rats  about  the  rafters. 

Lucy  raised  her  eyes  likewise  to  the  roof.  Its 
framework  was  constructed  of  the  smooth,  shiny  mid- 
ribs of  palm-fronds,  descending  from  a  central  ridge- 
pole below  the  mud  walls  and  supporting  outside  a 
shade  over  the  verandah.  Across  the  palm  rafters 
were  laid  transverse  rows  of  more  or  less  straight 
branches  or  sticks,  and  to  these  were  attached  the 
round  bunches  of  coarse  grass  which  formed  the  thatch. 
From  rafters  and  beams  there  fell  every  now  and 
again  little  wafts  of  yellowish  powder,  due  to  the  indus- 


138      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

trious    drilling   of    the    wood    by    burrowing   beetles. 

But  the  thatch  was  alive  with  larger  things  than 
insects,  especially  where  it  came  in  contact  with  the  top 
of  the  clay  walls.  Here  an  occasional  lizard  darted 
in  and  out  the  rafters  like  a  whip,  and  rats  poked  out 
their  long  faces  with  quizzical,  beady  eyes,  watching 
the  proceedings  below  with  rat-like  impudence. 

Teaching  had  begun  at  nine,  and  would  go  on  till 
lunch-time  —  twelve.  But  already  by  eleven  the 
teacher  was  weary  and  could  not  concentrate  her 
thoughts  on  the  drudgery  of  getting  elementary  ideas 
about  reading,  spelling  and  counting  into  these  Palaeo- 
lithic brains.  She  fell  silent.  Her  eyes  first  ranged 
over  the  School-house,  taking  in  all  its  details  in  a  mood 
of  scornful  hostility.  She  had  never  so  completely 
realized  the  hatefulness  of  her  present  existence  and  its 
bitter  contrast  with  her  home  life  in  England.  She 
was  sick  of  John's  simple  piety,  of  Brother  Ander- 
son's sanctimoniousness  and  disagreeably  affectionate 
manner  to  herself  .  .  .  and  his  way  of  eating,  his  be- 
haviour at  table,  his  unctuous  prayers.  Mr.  Bayley, 
whose  quiet  manners  and  politeness  appealed  to  her, 
was,  nevertheless,  fanatical  about  the  letter  of  Scrip- 
ture —  a  bigot,  Captain  Brentham  would  have  called 
him.  It  would  not  be  loyal  to  her  husband  —  John, 
at  least,  was  sincere  and  worked  very  hard;  other- 
wise what  satirical  letters  she  could  write  about  it 
all!  .  .  . 

But  the  one  she  most  disliked  among  her  associates 
was  Ann  Jamblin.  Ann  came  between  her  and  John, 
just  as  they  might  have  hit  it  off,  have  come  to  some 
agreement  about  religion  or  her  own  share  in  Mission 
work.  If  Ann  had  never  come  out,  things  might  have 
been  more  bearable.  .  .  .  Ann  had  come  here  on  a 
false  pretence.  She  was  in  love  with  John,  that  was 
certain,  though  John  was  too  much  of  a  goose  to  see 
it. 


MISSION  LIFE  139 

Certainly  she  had  made  herself  useful,  odiously  use- 
ful. .  .  .  The  men  liked  her  because  she  made  them 
so  comfortable.  .  .  .  That  talent,  of  course,  was  in- 
herited from  the  ham  and  beef  shop  at  home!  She 
shared  Lucy's  teaching  work  and  taught  the  women 
and  girls  in  the  afternoon  —  taught  them  sensible 
things  —  cooking,  plain  sewing,  washing,  ironing,  leav- 
ing to  Lucy  —  as  she  pretended  —  the  "  fine  lady  "  part 
of  the  work,  the  instruction  of  their  minds. 

Lucy's  eyes  flashed  in  her  day-dream  when  she  real- 
ized how  she  had  grown  to  loathe  the  morning  and 
evening  prayers^  .  .  .  Brother  Anderson's  contribu- 
tion to  the  uplifting  of  the  spirit,  especially.  How 
weary  was  the  Sunday  with  its  two  "  native  "  services, 
both  conducted  by  John  in  English,  broken  Swahili, 
and  Kagulu,  with  the  long-drawn-out  interpretation 
of  Josiah  Briggs. 

She  had  had  good  health  since  she  reached  Hangodi, 
after  that  ghastly  nightmare  journey  from  the  coast. 
That  was  fortunate,  because  the  nearest  medical  help 
was  fifty  miles  away.  But  oh!  the  monotony  of  the 
life!  How  much  longer  could  she  stand  it?  It  was 
not  so  bad  for  the  men.  Every  Saturday  they  took  a 
whole  holiday  and  went  down  to  the  lower  country  and 
shot  game  and  guinea-fowl  for  the  food  of  the  station. 
Sometimes  they  "  itinerated  "  and  she  and  Ann  were 
left  alone.  John  always  asserted  it  was  not  safe  for 
white  women  to  travel,  except  to  and  from  the  coast. 
With  much  camp  life  he  believed  they  became  un- 
womanly. .  .  . 

There  had  only  been  three  mails  since  she  had  arrived 
last  July.  Captain  Brentham  sent  her  books  and  news- 
papers, but  Ann  tossed  her  head  over  these  attentions 
and  John  once  or  twice  confiscated  the  books  as  be- 
ing of  dangerous  tendencies;  subversive  of  a  simple 
faith.  The  station  itself  was  provided  with  little  else 
to  read  except  the  Bible,  a  few  goody-goody  books  and 


140      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

magazines,  grammars  and  dictionaries  of  native  lan- 
guages. 

In  England  she  had  imagined  she  was  going  to 
sketch  and  botanize,  collect  butterflies,  and  keep  all 
sorts  of  wonderful  pets,  besides  beholding  superb 
scenery  and  meeting  every  now  and  then  celebrated 
explorers.  That  dream  had  soon  passed  away.  She 
had  no  time  for  sketching  in  the  week,  and  it  was  con- 
sidered wrong  to  do  it  on  a  Sunday.  And  even  if 
she  outraged  the  sentiment  of  the  community  and  sat 
down  with  her  sketch-block  and  water  colours  before 
a  flowering  tree  or  a  striking  view,  ants  came  up  and 
bit  her,  midges  attacked  her  face  till  it  was  puffed  out, 
or  the  sun  was  too  hot  or  the  wind  too  boisterous.  As 
to  botanizing,  there  was  certainly  splendid  forest  — 
with  tree-ferns  and  orchids  —  higher  up  the  Ulunga 
mountains,  but  it  was  pronounced  unsafe  to  botanize 
there  except  in  a  party.  There  were  snakes,  or  leop- 
ards, or  lurking  warriors  of  unfriendly  tribes.  .  .  . 

Her  thoughts  then  turned  to  the  homeland.  .  .  . 
Presently  she  was  back  in  the  scenes  she  had  left  nearly 
a  year  ago.  .  .  .  She  saw  herself  walking  slowly  from 
Aldermaston  village  up  the  road  to  Mortimer,  her  fa- 
ther's farmhouse  just  left  behind.  She  stopped  to 
greet  old  Miss  Fanning,  who  inhabited  the  rather  mon- 
astic-looking school-teacher's  house  by  a  special  con- 
cession, as  Lucy  —  her  successor  —  lived  with  her  par- 
ents hard  by.  The  children  of  the  village  were  playing 
games  with  the  pupil  teacher  in  the  large  grassy  yard. 
She  could  see  quite  distinctly  the  rustic  shed  which 
surrounded  two  sides  of  the  playground  —  like  the 
verandah  of  an  African  house.  In  her  day-dream  the 
children,  blue-eyed,  flaxen-haired,  seemed  to  greet  her. 
They  were  so  fond  of  her  —  How  could  she  have  left 
them  ?  .  .  .  Then  in  imagination  she  was  farther  along 
the  Mortimer  road,  past  the  high  brick  wall  of  Alder- 
maston Park.  Lordly  blue-green  cedars  topped  the 


MISSION  LIFE  141 

wall  of  mellow  brick.  Then  when  the  wall  turned  off 
to  the  right  it  was  succeeded  by  a  high  bank  and  hedge 
as  the  road  mounted  and  rose  above  the  river  valley. 
She  could  see,  oh!  with  such  detail,  the  soft  green  fern- 
fronds  of  the  bank.  Above  the  male  ferns  grew  a  row 
of  hart's-tongue.  Above  that,  here  and  there  a  fox- 
glove, tufts  of  bell  heather  and  where  the  hedge  low- 
ered and  you  could  see  into  spaces  of  the  oak  wood, 
there  were  brakes  of  French  willow  herb  in  pink  blos- 
som. .  .  . 

What  a  series  of  pictures  now  passed  before  her 
mental  vision  as  instinctively  she  closed  her  eyes  to 
Africa,  to  her  silent,  observant  class,  who  thought  that 
she  was  dozing !  White  ducks  on  a  wayside  pond,  set 
in  a  crescent  of  duckweed;  clipped  and  shaven  yews 
in  front  of  an  old  brick-and-timber  cottage  with  a 
steep  thatched  roof ;  an  upland  hayfield,  sturdy,  whole- 
some men  with  frank  blue  eyes  and  brawny  arms  of 
beefy  red ;  long-horned  cattle  with  a  make-believe 
fierceness  which  had  never  imposed  on  her,  standing 
in  the  shade  of  elms  and  whisking  flies  from  off  their 
red  flanks  and  cream  bellies ;  her  mother's  garden,  gay 
with  phlox,  sweet  peas  and  pansies,  and  scented  with 
dark  red  roses.  .  .  .  Oh,  why  had  she  ever  left  her 
mother,  left  her  pleasant  tranquil  work  at  the  National 
school  to  join  John  out  in  East  Africa?  It  was  vanity, 
partly ;  wishing  to  get  married ;  wishing  to  travel.  .  .  . 
For  the  evangelizing  of  Africa  she  had  ceased  to  care 
since  her  talks  with  Captain  Brentham — "Roger," 
she  called  him  to  herself  —  and  still  more  since  she 
had  come  to  know  Africa.  .  .  .  But  "  Roger  "• 
Well,  if  she  hadn't  come  out  to  Africa  she  would  cer- 
tainly never  have  had  the  opportunity  to  know  him 
...  on  that  steamer  voyage ! 

Lucy's  thoughts  were  abruptly  brought  back  to 
Eastern  Africa  and  discipline  in  her  school  class;  for 
a  too  venturesome  rat,  darting  up  a  rafter,  had  lost 


142 

his  footing  and  fallen  plop  amongst  the  girls  —  the 
"  Big-geru,"  and  they,  upsetting  forms  and  throwing 
away  slates,  had  flung  themselves  in  a  struggling  heap 
on  the  spot  where  the  rat  had  landed.  From  out  of 
the  melee  one  triumphant  young  woman  rose  up,  with 
her  smock  torn  from  top  to  bottom,  but  holding  up 
a  damaged,  dying  rat  by  its  broken  tail.  A  loud 
clamour  of  voices  disputing  the  fairness  of  the  cap- 
ture and  the  answering  shrieks  of  the  capturer,  secure 
in  the  possession  of  her  prize  (which  she  would  shortly 
eat  broiled  over  the  ashes  as  a  relish  to  her  sorghum 
porridge),  roused  Lucy  to  a  show  of  anger  which  stilled 
the  tumult  and  turned  the  girls'  attention  to  their 
teacher.  She,  standing  up  and  trying  to  stammer  out 
in  Swahili  words  of  adequate  reproof,  realized  still 
more  vividly  the  dreariness  of  her  present  lot,  and 
bursting  into  an  agony  of  tears,  buried  her  head  in 
her  arms  over  the  desk. 

The  little  children  gazed  at  her  grief,  awe-struck. 
Could  rich,  god-like  white  people  have  any  sorrow, 
when  they  might  wear  cloth  to  any  extent  and  had 
white  salt  in  bottles  and  delicious  foods  in  tins  ?  Pro- 
pelled by  Josiah's  wife  they  stole  away  wondering; 
and  the  "  Big-geru  "  left  the  school  gracelessly,  with 
loud  laughs  and  free  comments  in  Kagulu  on  the  white 
woman's  show  of  emotion.  The  schoolroom  clock 
ticked  on,  the  rats,  emboldened,  rushed  about  the 
thatch  and  dropped  without  mishap  on  the  floor,  whence 
they  scuttled  out  on  to  the  verandah,  then  up  the  posts 
and  so  into  the  roof  again.  The  flame-white  sunlight 
grew  fiercer  in  the  square,  the  shadows  of  the  trees 
shorter  and  more  purple.  At  last  a  loud  bell  clanged, 
and  presently  Ann  Jamblin  looked  in  and  said  with  a 
shade  of  insolence  as  she  passed  on:  "  The  luncheon 
bell,  Lucy." 

Lucy  affected  not  to  hear  her,  but  hurriedly  dabbed 
her  tear-stained  face  with  a  handkerchief,  shook  her 


MISSION  LIFE  143 

white  dress  tidy,  smoothed  her  hair  with  a  hand-touch 
here  and  there,  and  took  down  a  book  from  a  shelf  as 
if  to  study.  .  .  . 

Her  husband  stood  at  the  doorway. 
"  Luncheon's  ready,  dear.  .  .  .  Have  the  girls  been 
unruly  this  morning?  " 

"  Thank  you,  I'm  not  hungry.  Don't  wait  lunch  for 
me.  I  dare  say  I  shan't  want  anything  till  tea-time. 
.  .  .  The  girls  ?  Oh !  Not  worse  than  usual.  I  have 
no  influence  with  them.  .  .  .  It's  my  fault,  of  course. 
I  was  never  cut  out  for  this  work.  Please,  please 
don't  wait.  ...  I  suppose  it  isn't  part  of  one's  Chris- 
tian duty  to  eat  when  you  aren't  hungry?  .  .  ." 

John  Baines  looked  downcast  .  .  .  and  went  out  to 
the  lunch  of  roast  kid  or  roast  guinea-fowl,  sweet  po- 
tatoes, boiled  plantains,  and  banana  fritters  in  syrup 
of  sugar-cane,  with  less  appetite  than  usual. 

Lucy  meantime  tries  to  pretend  she  is  interested  in  a 
book.  It  is  far  too  hot  to  walk  out  and  botanize. 
And  then,  what  is  the  use  of  pressing  these  plants? 
The  colour  of  the  gorgeous  petals  soon  fades  to  brown, 
fungi  and  minute  insects  attack  them  and  they  crumble 
into  dust;  and  the  Mission  objects  to  all  the  blotting- 
paper  being  used  up  in  this  way.  .  .  . 

Presently  John  returns ;  with  a  native  servant  carry- 
ing a  tray  on  which  are  tea  things,  slices  of  guinea-fowl 
breast,  some  boiled  sweet  potatoes,  and  banana  fritters. 
To  obtain  this  rather  tempting  little  meal  he  has  had 
to  face  the  scornful  opposition  of  Ann  Jamblin,  but 
for  once  he  has  turned  on  her  (to  the  silent  dismay  of 
Bros.  Bayley  and  Anderson).  "Ann,"  he  has  said, 
"  you  must  learn  to  keep  your  tongue  and  temper  un- 
der control.  It  is  you  who  drive  Lucy  away  from 
our  meals  by  your  constant  fault-finding.  We  are  not 
all  made  alike ;  some  of  us  are  more  sensitive  than 
others."  Ann,  strange  to  say,  is  silenced  by  his  sharp 
tone  and  makes  no  retort. 


144      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

"  Come,  Lucy,"  he  said,  after  the  little  meal  has  been 
placed  on  the  table  by  her  desk ;  "  you  will  only  make 
yourself  ill  by  this  refusal  to  eat.  I  am  sorry  Ann 
has  been  so  teasing.  I  have  spoken  to  her.  Now  try 
to  eat  this  little  lunch  whilst  we  are  quiet  in  here." 

Lucy  looks  at  it  and  at  him.  In  the  middle  of  the 
tray  is  an  enamelled  iron  tumbler  containing  a  small 
bunch  of  mallow  flowers  with  large  lemon-tinted  petals 
and  a  vivid  mauve  centre.  This,  from  John,  means 
so  much,  as  a  concession  to  her  tastes.  She  bursts  into 
tears  —  at  this  period  she  was  very  soppy ! 

"Oh,  John !  You  are  good  to  me.  I  really  don't 
deserve  such  kindness.  I  have  been  a  dreadful  dis- 
appointment to  you." 

"  Well;  eat  up  the  lunch  and  you'll  make  me  happy," 
says  poor  John.  "  Why  shouldn't  we  all  be  happy 
here,  Lucy?  "  he  goes  on.  "  The  Lord  has  singularly 
blessed  our  work;  the  climate  —  for  Africa  —  is  not 
at  all  bad;  you  can't  say  the  scenery  is  ugly,  there  are 
beautiful  flowers  all  around  —  and  —  and  ferns. 
We're  getting  on  well  with  the  people,  much  better 
than  I  ever  expected.  Why,  your  schoolroom  is  al- 
ready too  small  for  the  numbers  and  Bayley  has  to 
teach  his  classes  out  of  doors  in  the  '  baraza.'  Look 
at  our  plantations  —  how  the  lemon  trees  and  oranges 
are  growing  —  and  the  coffee.  It's  true  we  get  our 
mails  rather  seldom.  There  seems  to  be  something 
queer  going  on  at  the  coast.  The  carriers  can't  get 
through.  .  .  .  The  Germans,  I  suspect.  But  we're 
safe  and  snug  enough  here.  As  for  me,  I  don't  want 
to  hear  from  home.  Mother's  letters  are  not  pre- 
cisely cheering.  I  only  ask  to  go  on  with  the  Lord's 
work  without  interruption.  Do  try  to  be  cheerful, 
darling  ...  do  you  think  you  —  Do  you  think  there 
is  —  er  —  any  hope  of  —  your ?  " 

"  I  will  try  once  more,  John.  But  couldn't  we  live 
more  by  ourselves?  Ann  gets  on  my  nerves,  do  what 


MISSION  LIFE  145 

I  will.  Couldn't  we  do  our  own  housekeeping?  "  con- 
tinues Lucy,  clasping  her  hands  and  looking  at  him 
pleadingly. 

"  Well,"  said  John,  a  little  ruefully,  "  you  know  you 
did  try  for  a  month  after  you  first  came,  but  it  was 
such  a  failure  that  you  gave  it  up.  You  couldn't  stand 
the  heat  of  the  cookhouse,  or  manage  the  cook,  or  do 
the  accounts  in  calico  for  the  things  you  bought.  And 
—  you  don't  know  much  about  cooking.  Why  should 
you?  You're  a  first-class  teacher.  And  then,  you 
know,  you  were  so  set  at  first  on  studying  —  studying 
botany  —  and  painting  pictures.  I  thought,  even,  you 
might  write  for  the  Mission  Magazine,  like  Mrs.  Len- 
nox and  Mrs.  Baxter.  .  .  ." 

Lucy:  "  But  they  always  want  you  to  write  goody 
goody  and  bring  in  the  Lord  at  every  turn  and  make 
out  the  black  people  to  be  quite  different  from  what 
they  are  —  Somehow  I  couldn't  fall  in  with  their 
style,  it's  so  humbugging " 

John:  "  Well,  then,  write  for  other  magazines, 
worldly  ones  if  you  like.  I'm  sure  you  could  write 
well  —  you  used  to  make  up  beautiful  poetry  before 
we  were  married,  and  you've  had  thrilling  enough  ex- 
periences on  the  way  up.  It  isn't  every  missionary's 
wife  who's  had  a  lion  trying  to  get  into  her  tent 

Lucy:  "  The  thought  of  that  journey  still  makes  me 
sick.  And  yet  I  used  to  think  I  should  adore  African 
travel — "  (An  ungrateful  thought  flashed  through 
her  mind :  "so  I  should,  with  —  with  —  some  peo- 
ple"). "Besides,  if  I  told  the  true  story  —  bugs, 
ants,  snakes,  rotting  corpses,  and  all  —  it  might  stop 
other  missionary  women  from  coming  out.  No.  I 
can't  write  anything.  I  do  make  collections  of  flowers, 
but  you  won't  let  me  go  far  from  the  Station  to  botan- 
ize and  you're  always  too  busy  to  come  with  me.  As 
to  painting,  it's  either  too  wet,  or  too  hot,  or  too  some- 
thing. And  then  you  hinted  once  I  shouldn't  take  a 


i46      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

half-holiday  every  day  but  help  some  one  else  in  their 
work,  so  I  give  up  some  of  my  time  to  Mr.  Bayley. 
.  .  .  No,  I  won't  call  him  '  Brother  Bayley,'  it's  so 
silly,  all  this  brother  and  sister  business  "•  -  (a  short 
pause  and  a  sudden  impulse).  "John!  Couldn't  you 
take  me  home  next  dry  season  —  and  get  them  to  give 
you  work  at  home — ?  Or  "  (noting  his  look  of  dis- 
may) "  send  me  home  to  Mother  and  join  me  there 
later  on,  when  your  leave  is  due?  .  .  ." 

John:  "  It  would  just  break  my  heart  either  to  part 
with  you  or  to  throw  up  my  missionary  career.  .  .  ." 

Lucy:  "Well,  then,  could  I  go  on  an  itinerary  — 
as  you  call  it  —  with  you  ?  Not  be  cooped  up  here 
with  that  intolerable  Ann  when  you  three  men  go  off 
on  a  round  of  preaching.  I'd  promise  not  to  mind 
anything  —  snakes,  ants,  lions,  or  even  the  Masai. 
Perhaps  I  might  get  to  enjoy  Africa  that  way  without 
all  this  intolerable  religion.  .  .  ." 

John:     "Lucy!  .  .  ." 

Lucy:  "  I  didn't  mean  to  shock  you  again,  but  I 
couldn't  help  it.  I  don't  know  what's  come  over  me, 
but  I've  grown  to  hate  religion,  and  still  more  pretend- 
ing to  be  religious.  I'm  sick  of  the  Bible  ...  at 
least  I  mean  of  the  Old  Testament.  It  always  makes 
me  think  of  some  wearisome  old  grandmother  who  says 
the  same  thing  over  and  over  again.  .  .  .  Who  wrote 
it  ?  That's  what  /  want  to  know.  How  do  we  know 
the  old  Jews  didn't  make  it  up  and  pretend  it  was  in- 
spired?" (John  ejaculates  a  "Lucy!"  of  protest  at 
intervals,  but  she  is  so  carried  away  by  a  desire  to 
express  her  revolt  that  she  pays  no  heed. )  "  You 
know  I've  been  trying  to  help  Mr.  Bayley  in  his  trans- 
lations by  reading  slowly  bits  of  the  Bible  —  just  now 
we're  in  Exodus.  He  would  begin  at  Genesis,  even 
though  I  said  all  the  people  wanted  was  the  Gospels  — 
I  don't  think  I  ever  studied  the  Bible  much  at  home 
and  it  all  comes  fresh  to  me  as  though  I  had  never 


MISSION  LIFE  147 

thought  about  it  before.  .  .  .  Well,  Exodus.  ... 
Have  you  ever  read  those  chapters  where  Moses  fasted 
—  or  said  he  fasted  —  for  forty  days  and  nights  with- 
out food  or  even  water  whilst  he  was  writing  down 
God's  sayings?  .  .  .  How  silly  some  of  them  sound. 
.  .  .  How  particular  the  Almighty  seemed  about  the 
colours  of  the  tabernacle  curtains  —  blue,  purple,  and 
scarlet  —  and  about  the  snuffers  and  the  snuff-dishes 
being  made  of  pure  gold.  And  about  the  '  knops.' 
.  .  .  What  is  a  '  knop  '  ?  Poor  Mr.  Bayley  can't  find 
the  word  in  any  dictionary.  What  can  be  the  good  of 
translating  all  this  into  Kagulu?  It  only  puzzles  the 
natives,  Josiah  told  me.  Mr.  Bayley's  always  losing 
his  temper  with  Josiah  because  he  can't  find  the  right 
Gulu  or  even  Swahili  word  for  some  of  these  things 
in  Exodus.  Surely  all  you  want  to  teach  them  is  sim- 
ple Christianity  and  how  to  live  less  like  pigs  and  more 
like  decent  human  beings.  .  .  ." 

John  (interposing  at  last,  after  he  has  cast  his  coun- 
ter argument  into  words)  :  "  How  can  you  teach 
them  about  Christ  without  first  explaining  what  led 
up  to  Christ,  the  Fall  and  the  Redemption?  We  want 
to  give  them  the  whole  Bible,  even  if  we  don't  under- 
stand every  passage  ourselves.  Every  word  of  the 
Bible  is  inspired."  (Lucy  makes  a  mute  protest.) 
"  But  oh !  my  Lucy  .  .  .  what  I  feared  and  foretold 
has  come  to  pass.  This  coquetting  with  Science  has 
cost  you  your  faith.  Kneel  down."  (She  knelt  with 
him  unwillingly  on  the  little  platform.) 

"  Oh  Lord,"  prayed  John,  most  earnestly,  "  visit 
Thine  handmaid  in  her  sore  need  for  Thy  help !  Dis- 
pel her  doubts  with  the  sunshine  of  —  of  —  Thy  grace. 
Convince  her  of  Thine  Almighty  Power  and  Wisdom 
and  consecrate  her  to  Thy  service  in  this  Heathen 
Land." 

They  rose  to  their  feet  constrainedly.  John  covertly 
flicked  the  dust  from  his  trousers,  blew  his  nose,  and 


I48      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

wiped  eyes  suffused  with  emotion.  Lucy  impatiently 
shook  her  white  skirt.  How  she  hated  these  im- 
promptu genuflections  which  always  shortened  the 
wearing  life  of  the  skirt  and  sent  it  prematurely  to 
the  wash.  And  much  washing  made  it  shrink  so. 

Still,  her  passion  was  spent  and  she  felt  very,  very 
sorry  for  her  husband,  and  a  little  guilty  in  her  dis- 
content. If  she  had  come  out  straight  to  him  from 
England  under  no  other  influence,  would  she  not  have 
been  a  fairer  critic,  have  taken  more  kindly  to  mission 
work?  And  was  not  John  really  cut  out  for  a  mis- 
sionary, with  every  reason  to  be  proud  of  his  station's 
success  ? 

These  silent  musings,  while  John  awkwardly 
hummed  a  hymn  tune,  were  broken  in  upon  by  the 
strident  voice  and  bustling  presence  of  Ann  Jamblin. 
"  Well,  then,  young  people  "  (being  three  years  older 
than  they  were  she  sometimes  assumed  a  maternal 
air),  "if  you've  finished  honeymooning,  I'll  take  the 
tray  away  and  get  the  school  ready  for  my  sewing 
class."  (To  one  without:  "  Pilisilla!  Ring  the  bell 
three  times.") 

They  left  the  School-house  without  answering  her, 
hand  in  hand.  Lucy  felt  so  sorry  for  John  that  she 
resolved  once  more  to  try  to  be  a  missionary's  wife 
and  helpmeet.  The  intense  heat  of  the  forenoon  was 
breeding  a  thunderstorm,  and  already  the  sky  was  over- 
cast, and  a  few  puffs  of  cool  air  were  blowing  up  from 
the  plains.  Presently  these  grew  into  an  alarming 
dust-storm,  a  hurricane  which  blew  Bay  ley's  proofs 
and  manuscript  to  right  and  left;  and  when  Lucy 
rushed  in  to  pick  them  up  she  was  blinded  for  a  min- 
ute by  the  glare  of  lightning.  Then  the  wind  dropped 
before  a  deluge  —  a  grey,  sweeping  deluge  of  rain. 
In  trying  to  save  this  and  that,  Lucy  and  Ann  were 
drenched  to  the  skin  and  had  to  change  their  soaking 
garments.  The  change  to  dry  clothes,  the  rub  down 


MISSION  LIFE  149 

somehow  cheered  them,  and  made  them  more  friendly. 
Lucy  then  returned  to  Bayley's  study  and  once  more 
helped  him  in  the  returning  daylight  with  his  trans- 
lations. But  he  was  now  well  into  Leviticus,  and  some 
passages  proved  so  embarrassing  to  both  Lucy  and 
Josiah  that  the  former  broke  off  with  the  exclamation, 
"  It's  teatime." 

And  sure  enough  there  sounded  the  one  pleasant 
summons  in  the  twenty-four  hours :  the  tea  bell. 

The  rain  had  ceased,  the  darkness  had  lifted  for  a 
while  and  left  the  western  sky  a  sweet  lemon  yellow, 
out  of  which  a  tempered  sunlight  twinkled.  The  air 
had  become  fresh  and  uplifting  in  a  dying  breeze.  The 
little  party  met  round  the  tea-table  in  a  mood  to  jest 
and  to  be  friendly.  Ann,  more  good-humoured  than 
usual,  described  her  so.using.  She  also  told  Lucy  she 
had  had  two  of  Lucy's  skirts  mended  at  her  sewing 
lesson,  to  save  her  the  trouble.  Oh,  it  was  all  right; 
they  had  served  as  a  pattern. 

A  couple  of  armed  porters  arrived  during  teatime, 
their  calico  clothing  still  adhering  to  their  brown  bod- 
ies from  the  rain  storm  through  which  they  had  stolidly 
walked.  They  had  not  brought  the  regular  "  Europe  " 
mail  from  Unguja,  but  some  parcels  from  Mr.  Calla- 
way  and  local  letters.  These  read  aloud  over  the  tea- 
table  spoke  of  the  restlessness  of  the  coast  population 
caused  by  the  administration  of  the  German  Company, 
of  Arab  gossip  at  Unguja,  of  the  sombre  news  from 
Nyasaland  where  a  Scottish  trading  Company  was  at 
open  war  with  the  Arabs,  in  trying  to  defend  the  popu- 
lation from  Arab  slave  raids.  Tiputipu  was  away  on 
the  Congo  looking  for  Stanley  and  had  withdrawn  his 
restraining  influence  from  the  Tanganyika  Arabs. 
Was  a  concerted  Arab  attack  on  the  interfering  white 
man  about  to  begin?  The  missionaries  looked  from 
one  to  the  other  a  little  anxiously.  A  growing  feeling 
of  camaraderie  linked  them.  They  felt  themselves  to 


150      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

be  an  outpost  of  Christianity  in  a  world  threatened  by 
the  Moslem.  They  congratulated  John  in  that  he  had 
so  completely  won  over  the  Ulunga  chief,  Mbogo,  that 
the  latter  had  expelled  the  Arab  traders  from  his  hill 
country  and  made  common  cause  with  the  White 
man.  .  .  . 

At  dinner  —  or  as  they  better  styled  it,  supper  — 
they  were  quite  cheerful.  There  was  even  a  special 
zest  in  the  evening  service,  point  and  vim  in  the  short- 
ened prayers.  Ann  was  congratulated  by  Lucy  on  her 
ground-nut  soup  and  "  pepperpot " ;  and  the  treacle 
pudding  which  followed  was  declared  a  masterpiece. 

John  that  night  kissed  his  wife  tenderly  in  mute 
recognition  of  her  more  sympathetic  attitude.  .  .  .  She 
did  not  shrink  as  usual  from  his  caresses. 


CHAPTER  X 

ROGER    ARRIVES 

SIR  JAMES  ECCLES,  it  was  decided,  was  not  to 
return  to  Unguja  to  guide  once  more  the  destinies 
of  East  Africa.  Prince  Bismarck  would  not  hear  of 
it.  After  considerable  hesitation  Sir  Godfrey  Dew- 
burn,  K.C.I.E.,  was  appointed  to  succeed  him  in  the 
spring  of  1888  and  arrived  at  Unguja  to  take  up  his 
position  as  Agent  and  Consul-General  when  Roger 
Brentham  had  about  completed  a  year's  tenure  of  the 
post  in  an  "  acting  "  capacity. 

Sir  Godfrey  Dewburn  was  a  fortunate  Irish  soldier, 
who  —  because  he  had  a  capacity  for  getting  on  well 
with  everybody  —  had  held  a  high  administrative  po- 
sition in  India,  though  outside  the  ranks  of  the  Indian 
Civil  Service.  He  did  well  over  the  Prince  of  Wales's 
visit  in  organizing  successful  durbars,  nautch  dances 
and  perfect  shooting  picnics,  in  which  record  tigers 
were  bagged.  He  did  better  still  in  an  aftermath  of 
the  Imperial  visit,  when  the  Duke  of  Ulster  and  the 
Hereditary  Prince  of  Baden  came  out  to  shoot  in  Dew- 
burn's  new  province.  He  had  also  married,  with  very 
wise  prevision,  a  daughter  of  the  Choselwhit  who  was 
legal  adviser  to  the  Circumlocution  Office.  When  it 
was  felt  that  Sir  James  Eccles  must  be  thrown  over  to 
avoid  a  breach  with  Germany,  which  threatened  a 
Franco-Germano-Russian  alliance  against  us,  some- 
body —  perhaps  the  Duke  of  Ulster,  who  still  remem- 
bered Dewburn's  champagne  cup,  cooled  with  the  snows 
of  the  Himalaya  and  tendered  just  at  the  psychological 
moment  when  the  most  splendid  of  the  tigers  had  fallen 

151 


152      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

to  the  Royal  rifle  —  suggested  Dewburn  for  the  post. 
And  as  he  was  backed  up  by  the  India  Office,  who 
wanted  to  weed  their  Civil  Service  of  outsiders,  and  by 
Molyneux  who  thought  Dewburn's  dinners  at  the 
"  Rag  "  quite  the  best  in  London,  Lord  Wiltshire,  tired 
and  preoccupied  over  the  Parnell  letters,  gave  way  and 
appointed  Dewburn.  Lord  Silchester's  suggestion  of 
Brentham  was  deemed  "  indelicate,"  emphasized  as 
it  was  by  Sibyl,  to  whom  Lord  Wiltshire  had  taken  a 
whimsical  dislike. 

Dewburn,  when  he  came  out,  posed  as  a  jolly  good 
fellow  who  praised  every  one  all  round  and  enchanted 
Mrs.  Bazzard  by  his  manners  and  easy  cordiality.  But 
after  a  bit,  Brentham's  efficiency  got  on  his  nerves. 
It  was  irritating  to  hear  his  subordinate  —  so  much 
better  fitted  than  he  for  the  post,  some  might  have 
said  —  prattling  and  swearing  in  Swahili  and  Unguja 
Arabic,  and  rather  markedly  doing  without  an  inter- 
preter. Dewburn  spoke  French  well  and  a  little  bad 
Hindustani,  but  there  his  linguistics  ended;  and  his 
brain  sutures  being  closed  would  admit  no  knowledge 
of  an  African  tongue. 

Then  there  was  Spencer  Bazzard  always  at  hand, 
serviceable  unto  servility,  ready  to  jot  inspirations  and 
judgments  down  on  a  writing-pad  with  some  prehis- 
toric form  of  the  fountain-pen  or  indelible  pencil,  and 
reproduce  these  utterances  afterwards,  conveniently 
elaborated.  Brentham,  on  the  other  hand,  preferred 
putting  in  a  draft  of  his  own,  which  took  quite  an  in- 
dependent line  and  might  have  led  H.M.  Government 
to  do  something,  make  up  their  minds  to  some  definite 
course.  .  .  . 

Then  again,  Brentham's  real  destination  was  the 
German  mainland.  .  .  .  The  situation  there  was 
strained.  .  .  . 

Mrs.  Bazzard  somehow  amused  and  intrigued  Sir 
Godfrey  (Lady  Dewburn  had  not  yet  arrived).  He 


ROGER  ARRIVES  153 

guessed  her  as  somewhat  of  a  demi-rep,  but  to  him,  as  to 
me,  such  a  person  is  more  interesting  to  study  than  the 
simple  village  maiden,  or  the  clergyman's  daughter  with 
her  smooth  hair  parted  in  the  middle.  .  .  . 

Who  precisely  were  the  Bazzards?  May  I,  with  a 
novelist's  omniscience,  clear  up  the  mystery? 

There  was  a  celebrated  firm  of  solicitors  in  Staple 
Inn  known  as  Grevvgious  and  Bazzard.  It  had  origi- 
nated in  a  Mr.  Hiram  Grewgious,  who  had  a  valuable 
Norfolk  connexion  and  had  figured  with  some  distinc- 
tion and  celebrity  in  a  famous  Kentish  murder  trial  in 
the  early  'sixties.  The  junior  partner,  Mr.  Bazzard, 
took  over  the  business  from  Mr.  Grewgious,  and  when 
the  latter  died  in  1878  still  preserved  the  honoured 
style  of  the  firm.  This  Mr.  Bazzard  led  a  double  life, 
in  that  he  was  not  only  a  particularly  astute  solicitor, 
but  also  a  playwright  of  ability  who  produced  at  least 
two  stirring  melodramas  under  a  nom  de  plume. 

As  solicitor  he  had  lifted  Mr.  Bennet  Molyneux  once 
out  of  a  considerable  difficulty  and  delicate  dilemma 
...  he  had  ascertained  that  the  lady  was  travelling 
under  an  assumed  name  and  ...  in  short,  he  had  set- 
tled the  affair  without  any  fuss,  and  Molyneux  was 
thoroughly  grateful  and  asked  him  to  dine  at  the  Trav- 
ellers, giving,  of  course,  due  notice,  so  that  the  guest- 
room, in  those  distant  days  with  its  settees  thick  with 
dust,  might  be  got  ready,  and  a  fire  be  lit  to  take  off 
the  chill. 

Over  walnuts  and  port,  Mr.  Bazzard  had  mentioned 
the  existence  of  a  much-younger  brother — fifteen 
years  younger,  in  point  of  fact  —  rather  at  a  loose 
end  since  he  was  called  to  the  Bar  —  clever  chap  withal, 
steady,  married  now  to  a  deuced  pretty  woman,  but 
in  his  youth  the  very  devil  with  the  sex.  ("  Just  so," 
would  nod  Mr.  Molyneux  comprehendingly,  who,  ex- 
cept for  the  most  pardonable  slip  with  Mrs.  at 


154      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

Lucerne,  was  a  blameless  husband  and  father.)  Well, 
then,  there  he  was  —  had  tried  ranching  in  the  States 
and  buying  horses  in  the  Argentine,  got  done  in  the 
eye  by  that  scoundrel,  Bax  Strangevvays  —  knew  a 
lot  about  the  tropics  —  stand  any  climate  —  take  on 
any  job.  In  short,  did  Mr.  Molyneux  know  of  an 
opening  anywhere  in  Africa,  C.O.  or  F.O.,  for  a  sport- 
ing chap  with  a  knowledge  of  Law? 

And  Bennet  had  put  down  his  name  for  a  vacancy 
in  the  East  African  Consular  service.  And  having 
thus  taken  him  under  his  wing,  was  prepared  to  stand 
by  him  through  thick  and  thin  .  .  .  even  deluded  him- 
self into  thinking  he  was  a  damned  good  sort,  and  his 
golden-haired  wife — "bit  of  the  devil  in  her,  no 
doubt  "•  —  a  fit  person  for  Mrs.  Molyneux  to  know  — 
in  the  country,  at  any  rate. 

Perhaps  she  was.  Why  should  one  sneer  at  a 
woman  for  trying  to  improve  her  position  and  looks 
and  wriggle  into  a  less  sordid  sphere  than  that  in  which 
she  was  brought  up  ?  Emilia  Standish  —  christened 
Emily,  of  course,  but  wrote  her  name  "  Emilia  "  from 
the  time  she  was  seventeen  —  was,  as  Captain  Bren- 
tham  ill-naturedly  guessed,  the  daughter  of  a  Bays- 
water  widow  who  kept  a  Bayswater  boarding-house 
( few  districts  of  London  have  such  a  power  for  mould- 
ing human  beings  to  its  guise).  Emilia  Standish  — 
or  was  it  Stapleton  ?  —  I  really  forget  —  had  tried 
life  as  a  governess  with  ill  success.  She  confided  to 
her  mother,  and  her  mother  only,  that  she  might  have 
succeeded  here  or  there  had  not  her  pupil's  father 
made  improper  advances  from  which  she  had  to  flee. 
She  had  studied  for  the  stage,  but  like  her  predestined 
fate,  Spencer  Bazzard,  she,  at  thirty-two,  was  some- 
what at  a  loose  end  and  living  at  home  when  Spencer 
came  to  lodge  at  her  mother's  boarding-house.  He 
was  down  on  his  luck,  almost  in  hiding,  nearly  cast 


ROGER  ARRIVES  155 

off  by  his  highly  respectable,  much  older  brother.  He 
fell  ill.  Emilia  took  pity  on  him,  nursed  him,  and 
defied  her  mother  over  the  financial  question.  Out  of 
gratitude  he  proposed.  She  accepted  him  and  took 
stock  of  the  situation,  called  on  the  elder  brother  in 
Staple  Inn,  secured  his  advocacy  for  a  "  colonial  " 
appointment  —  and  —  you  know  the  rest. 

Spencer  can't  have  been  wholly  bad,  because  though 
they  had  many  a  private  tiff  and  unheard  wrangle, 
this  woman  stuck  by  him  and  made  a  career  for  him. 
Brentham,  in  writing  to  his  sister,  gave  too  unfair  a 
description  of  Spencer.  He  omitted  to  notice  that 
though  his  knowledge  of  law  was  so  imperfect  as  to 
throw  doubt  on  the  efficacy  of  the  examinations  which 
then  admitted  to  the  Bar,  he  had  at  any  rate  acquired 
some  knowledge  of  shorthand,  and  certain  of  the  quali- 
ties necessary  to  playing  private  secretary  to  an  impor- 
tant personage.  So  that  Sir  Godfrey  preferred  greatly 
the  retention  of  Bazzard  as  his  lieutenant  at  Unguja, 
rather  than  the  slightly  gloomy  and  excessively  well- 
informed  Brentham. 

There  came  at  this  time  rumour  after  rumour  that 
the  Arabs  of  the  Zangian  coast  were  preparing  to  rise 
in  force  not  only  against  the  Germans  but  against  all 
white  men.  They  were  concerting  measures  in  com- 
mon with  the  Arabs  of  Mombasa,  of  Tanganyika, 
Nyasa  and  the  Upper  Congo  to  expel  all  white  men 
from  East  Africa  and  found  a  great  Slave-holding 
empire  which  might  link  up  with  the  victoriously  anti- 
European  Mahdi  of  the  Sudan.  Sir  Godfrey  Dew- 
burn  did  not  clothe  his  Memorandum  of  instructions 
to  Brentham  in  exactly  these  comprehensive  and 
grandiloquent  terms,  derived  from  a  contemporaneous 
essay  of  my  own,  but  he  said : 

"  Look  here,  dear  old  chap.  You  know  you  are  a 
bit  of  the  fifth  wheel  to  the  coach  here,  on  this  potty 


156      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

little  island.  You've  put  me  up  to  all  the  ropes,  I'm 
well  in  the  saddle.  Now  suppose  you  cut  along  to 
your  own  show  ?  The  mainland,  hey  ?  Go  and  round 
up  those  blasted  Germans,  don't  you  know?  Of 
course,  steer  clear  of  quarrels  —  that'd  never  do.  Be 
coldly  polite,  but  see  what  they're  up  to  and  report 
to  me  —  fully.  Strikes  me  it's  blowing  up  for  a 
storm.  .  .  ." 

So  Brentham  shipped  himself  and  his  indispensable 
retinue  of  Goanese  cook,  Swahili  butler,  and  a  nucleus 
of  fifteen  always  dependable  gunmen-porters  of  the 
stalwart  Unyamwezi  breed  over  to  Medinat-al-barkah 
-  the  "  Town  of  Blessings,"  on  the  Zangian  coast : 
formerly  the  chief  shipping  port  of  slaves  and  now  the 
head-quarters  of  the  German  Chartered  Company  which 
had  succeeded  to  the  authority  of  the  Sultan  of  Unguja. 

A  few  months  afterwards,  when  he  had  organized  a 
Consulate  and  an  Indian  clerical  staff  in  an  adapted, 
cleansed,  and  tidied  Arab  house,  he  received  an  urgent 
and  confidential  communication  from  Sir  Godfrey : 

"  The  P.O.  is  much  perturbed  by  the  reports  of 
Arab  risings  against  the  German  Company.  Mvita 
seems  to  be  quiet  under  Mackenzie.  The  various  mis- 
sionary societies  are  clamouring  for  information  and 
some  indication  that  H.M.G.  realizes  the  seriousness 
of  the  situation.  I  have  been  instructed  semi-officially 
by  H.  and  M.  that  you  should  at  once  proceed  inland 
with  a  sufficiently  strong  caravan  and  visit  the  mission- 
ary stations  within  a  radius  of  —  say  —  three  hundred 
miles  of  Medina,  assisting  the  white  people  to  repair 
to  safe  positions  on  the  coast,  especial  care  being  taken 
to  bring  away  their  women  and  children.  You  know 
far  better  what  to  do  than  I,  who  am  a  new  comer  to 
East  Africa.  So,  carte  blanche.  Do  your  best. 
Good  luck  and  chin-chin. 

"  Lady  Dewburn,  who  has  just  come  out,  is  dying  to 
put  her  feet  on  a  maned  lion  skin  when  she  gets  out  of 


ROGER  ARRIVES  157 

bed.     So  if  you've  any  luck  shooting,  '  Then  you'll  re- 
member me ! ' 

"  Yours, 

"  GODFREY  DEWBURN." 

In  consequence  of  these  instructions  you  can  picture 
such  events  as  these  occurring  at  the  end  of  September, 
1888. 

Lucy  Baines,  attended  by  Josiah  Briggs's  wife  Ha- 
lima,  was  taking  the  air  on  the  outskirts  of  Hangodi. 
She  had  had  a  baby  in  the  previous  July,  and  was  still 
weak  and  anaemic.  The  confinement  had  been  a  diffi- 
cult one,  as  it  was  a  little  premature,  owing  to  Lucy 
having  been  frightened  by  a  hyena.  A  medical  mis- 
sionary had  been  in  hurried  attendance,  and  kind  Mrs. 
Stott  had  come  fifty  miles  to  act  as  an  amateur  mid- 
wife. But  the  child  died  soon  after  its  birth,  and  Lucy, 
for  the  first  fortnight,  had  been  delirious.  If  her  child 
had  lived  her  whole  outlook  might  have  changed  and 
brightened.  As  it  was 

John  had  rigged  up  a  kind  of  machila  —  I  can't  ex- 
plain a  second  time  what  a  machila  is  —  a  compromise 
between  a  palanquin  and  a  hammock  —  and  this  could 
be  taken  out  on  short  journeys  by  two  strong  porters. 
With  this  and  her  pupil-teacher,  Halima,  in  attendance, 
Lucy  was  wont  to  make  little  afternoon  pilgrimages 
along  the  red  paths  on  the  outskirts  of  the  Hangodi 
plateau.  •<  • 

At  this  and  that  shady  spot  she  would  leave  her. 
machila  languidly,  sit  on  a  camp  stool  and  pick  flowers 
and  examine  them :  or  she  would  practise  her  Swahili 
and  Kagulu  with  Halima  and  question  this  woman  — 
greatly  devoted  to  her  —  on  native  manners  and  cus- 
toms, or  native  legends.  The  two  porters  would  squat 
at  a  respectful  distance,  or  if  told  they  would  not  be 
wanted  for  half  an  hour,  would  stroll  off  to  the  nearest 
native  village. 


158      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

On  this  particular  day  in  September  they  came  run- 
ning back  in  great  excitement  to  say  a  white  man's 
safari  was  approaching.  It  could  be  seen  in  the 
plain  below  .  .  .  quite  a  small  army  of  black  men 
headed  by  one  white  man,  coming  in  single  file  over 
the  burnt  grass. 

Rumour  had  flown  ahead  of  it  ...  as  it  did  in 
Africa,  in  pre-telegraph  days.  The  white  man  was  a 
great  English  consul  coming  to  make  a  treaty  with 
Ulunga,  or  coming  to  fight  the  Arabs,  or  to  turn  the 
Wa-dachi  out  of  the  country  and  to  place  Nguru  under 
the  Woman  chief  of  the  English.  Mbogo  the  chief 
had  already  run  up  his  English  flag.  .  .  . 

Lucy's  heart  stood  still  and  she  sat  on  her  camp 
stool  too  much  overcome  to  remain  standing.  Could 
it  ...  be  ...  Roger? 

Halima  fumbled  in  her  basket  and  produced  a  re- 
storative. Presently  Lucy  rose  to  her  feet  and  said  in 
a  decisive  tone : 

"  Take  me  to  meet  the  white  man.  .  .  ." 

They  met  about  three  miles  from  the  Mission  Sta- 
tion. Seeing  the  machila  approaching,  heralded  by  the 
boastful  singing  of  its  carriers,  anxious  to  do  their 
mistress  honour,  Brentham  had  got  off  his  riding  don- 
key and  handed  it  to  a  follower  carrying  his  sporting 
rifle.  He  walked  to  meet  the  unknown  person  sway- 
ing in  the  jaunty  advance  of  the  delighted  porters. 
The  machila  stopped.  Lucy  emerged  from  it,  then 
overcome  with  dizziness  sank  down  by  the  wayside. 
Quickly  he  had  raised  her,  unthinkingly  and  instinc- 
tively their  arms  were  round  each  other.  ..."  My 
dearest  girl!  You  are  safe  then?  Your  station  has 
not  been  attacked  ?  " 

"  My  darling  Roger!  you  have  come  for  me  ... 
take,  oh,  take  me  away !  " 

Thus  they  spoke  instinctively  in  continuation  of 
thoughts  long  sanctioned  by  their  inner  consciousness, 


ROGER  ARRIVES  159 

but  never  outwardly  expressed.  There  were  no  lis- 
teners who  could  understand  what  the  avowals  meant. 
Nevertheless  they  hastened  to  resume  a  correct  parlance 
as  between  old  acquaintances  and  nothing  more. 

"  I  think,"  said  Lucy,  "  you  had  better  send  one  or 
two  spare  men  on  ahead  with  a  brief  note  to  my  hus- 
band saying  you  will  be  arriving  at  our  station  in  about 
an  hour,  that  you  met  me  on  the  road  and  will  bring 
me  on  with  you.  This  will  give  our  people  time  to  — 
to  —  plan  where  to  put  you  all.  There  won't  be  room 
for  everybody  inside  the  stockade.  Then  when  you've 
sent  off  the  note  we  can  rest  for  half  an  hour  or  so  in 
that  piece  of  shade,  where  there  are  the  euphorbias  and 
the  fig  trees,  and  I  shan't  feel  quite  so  shaky.  I've  been 
rather  ill  —  I'll  tell  you  all  about  it  when  you've  sent 
off  the  note." 

Roger  scribbled  the  message  on  a  leaf  out  of  his 
road-book. 

"  There  is  our  station,"  said  Lucy,  "  about  two  miles 
off,  on  that  great  spur  that  comes  out  from  the  moun- 
tain. You  can  see  the  white  houses  and  the  red  brick 
chapel  and  the  glint  of  the  corrugated  iron.  And  away 
to  the  —  well,  I  s'pose  it's  the  south  —  is  the  chief 
Mbogo's  principal  village  —  all  those  little  brown 
huts.  .  .  ." 

The  two  impatient  messengers  scarcely  waited  for 
this  information  but  bounded  off  to  deliver  their  mes- 
sage and  find  some  resting-place  for  the  caravan,  ex- 
tenuated as  it  was  with  the  long,  hot  march. 

Lucy  took  Roger's  arm  —  how  it  thrilled  her,  how 
like  an  impossible  dream  come  true !  —  and  followed 
by  Halima  and  the  machila  reached  the  patch  of  blue 
shade  made  by  a  group  of  candelabra  euphorbias  and 
fig  trees  with  thick  glossy  leaves  and  pendent  branches. 
The  ground  underneath  was  absolutely  clear  of  any 
cover  for  snakes  and  was  whitish  with  the  ashes  of 
many  a  cooking  fire,  lit  here  by  caravans  arriving  at 


i6o      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

evening  and  preferring  to  postpone  their  interviews 
with  Chief  Mbogo  —  sometimes  a  rapacious  gentle- 
man over  his  dues  —  till  the  morning  light. 

Whilst  Brentham's  cook  was  preparing  a  cup  of  tea, 
Lucy  poured  forth  tumultuously  her  story  of  the  chief 
happenings  of  the  past  six  months.  Brentham  said  in 
reply  that  she  must  have  gone  through  a  beastly  time ; 
but  she  might  now  take  heart.  He  had  come  with 
definite  instructions  to  take  her  away  to  the  coast  and 
her  husband  too,  if  the  men-folk  agreed.  "  Any 
other  English  woman  at  the  station  ?  "  he  inquired. 

Lucy  told  him  there  was  Ann  Jamblin,  but  did  not 
think  the  present  moment  the  right  one  in  which  to 
expatiate  on  the  irritating  side  of  Ann's  disposition. 
Moreover  now  that  she  was  going  back  to  England, 
why  run  down  Ann?  If  Ann  stayed  behind,  as  she 
was  convinced  she  would  do,  she  might  be  a  great  com- 
fort to  John.  "  Don't  think  it  odd  of  me,"  finished 
Lucy,  "  if  when  we  reach  the  station  I  go  straight  to 
my  house  and  to  bed.  I  feel  really  too  much  shaken 
to  take  part  in  any  discussion.  I  would  much  sooner 
you  settled  everything  with  John.  I'm  sure  he  won't 
oppose  my  going." 

When  Brentham  reached  Hangodi  he  was  introduced 
to  Ann,  who  listened  to  his  polite  phrases  rather  impa- 
tiently and  seemed  a  little  incredulous  about  any  dan- 
ger from  Arab  attacks.  What  exercised  her  mind, 
she  said  frankly,  was  how  to  keep  the  hundred  men  of 
his  caravan  from  too  close  contact  with  her  twenty  or 
thirty  maidens  who  lived  in  —  what  it  was  hoped 
was  — "  maiden  meditation,  fancy  free,"  within  the 
stockaded  boundaries  of  the  Mission  Station.  The 
local  young  manhood  of  the  near-by  Ulunga  villages 
was  supposed  to  stand  too  much  in  awe  of  Ann  and 
to  obey  too  strictly  their  chief's  prohibition  of  interfer- 
ence with  the  young  women  of  the  Mission  to  annoy 
them  with  any  amorous  advances;  but  already  Ann 


ROGER  ARRIVES  161 

thought  she  had  seen  bold  glances  cast  at  her  pupils  — 
whom  she  was  training  to  be  Christian  wives  of  Chris- 
tian husbands  —  by  the  love-famished  stalwarts  of  the 
caravan;  and  a  coy  recognition  of  this  admiration  on 
the  part  of  the  plump  "  Big-geru."  To  ease  her  ap- 
prehensions the  men  were  soon  all  drafted  off  to  billets 
in  the  native  villages  a  mile  away.  To  Brentham  and 
his  personal  servants  were  alotted  the  Boys'  School 
and  the  Chapel  for  their  accommodation,  the  Consul 
being  told  that  under  all  the  circumstances  of  his  visit 
there  could  be  no  thought  of  sacrilege  in  his  using  the 
House  of  God  as  a  dwelling-place. 

Brentham  had  told  them  as  soon  as  he  arrived  that  he 
was  charged  with  instructions  to  escort  all  the  white 
personnel  of  Hangodi  to  some  safe  place  on  the  coast 
whilst  this  war  between  Arabs  and  Germans  was  going 
on.  He  had  started  from  Medinat-al-barkah  and  had 
with  great  difficulty  and  by  making  the  utmost  use  of 
the  British  flag  and  of  the  presence  of  British  war  ves- 
sels off  the  coast,  pushed  his  way  past  the  insurgent 
Arabs  and  Waswahili  that  were  attacking  the  German 
strongholds. 

By  forced  marches  he  had  reached  the  mission  sta- 
tions of  Uluguru  and  Usagara,  and  had  advised  the 
retreat  of  the  older  men  and  all  the  white  women  to- 
wards the  Kilwa  coast,  not  at  present  in  revolt.  He 
left  them  still  undecided  whether  or  not  to  take  his 
advice,  but  he  had  furnished  them  with  a  reinforcement 
of  porters  and  arms. 

There  was  no  time  to  lose,  so  he  was  now  hurrying 
on  to  Ulunga  and  Ugogo  to  put  the  same  proposition 
before  the  members  of  the  East  African  Mission,  ex- 
cept that  the  safest  route  to  the  coast  must  now  be  a 
great  detour  towards  Kilimanjaro. 

Whatever  the  men  decided  to  do,  the  women  should 
at  any  rate  come  away  with  him.  He  would  proceed 
westward  and  try  to  pick  up  the  Stotts ;  then  with  his 


1 62      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

stout-hearted  Wanyamwezi  soldier-porters  they  would 
all  find  a  way  round  the  routes  and  villages  dominated 
by  the  Arabs  and  Wangwana  l  and  reach  the  coast  at 
Mvita,  where  there  was  a  British  Consulate  and  where 
British  gunboats  were  lying  off  the  Arab  town.  But 
time  was  precious.  Already  he  had  heard  that  bands 
of  plundering  Wangwana  and  Ruga-ruga  2  were  ap- 
proaching Ugogo  from  the  west. 

"  How  long  can  you  give  us?"  said  the  anguished 
John,  torn  between  his  sense  of  duty  regarding  his  wife 
and  his  extreme  reluctance  to  abandon  his  Mission 
Station  to  certain  destruction. 

"  Well,  not  more  than  forty-eight  hours." 

"  Brethren,"  said  John,  "  we  must  meet  in  confer- 
ence and  decide  this.  Sister  Lucy  has  retired  to  bed 
-  I  advised  her  to  do  so.  She  has  left  it  to  me  to 
settle  what  she  had  better  do.  But  for  the  rest  of  us, 
let  us  meet  after  supper  in  the  mess  house  and  talk  it 
over.  You,  sir,"  he  said,  to  the  worn  and  weary- 
looking  Brentham  —  who,  whatever  he  might  appear 
in  Lucy's  eyes  as  paladin  and  parfit  gentill  knight,  was 
streaked  with  black  and  brown  after  having  ridden  and 
walked  through  the  charred  herbage  of  the  burnt  plains 
still  smoking  with  their  dry-season  bush  fires  — "  You, 
sir,  would  like  a  rest  and  a  wash  and  a  meal.  Shall  I 
show  you  your  quarters?  .  .  ." 

When  the  little  party  met  in  conclave,  how  unreal 
the  threat  of  war  and  violence  seemed!  The  open 
square  of  the  station  was  bathed  in  silver  moonlight 
from  a  moon  three-quarters  full ;  there  was  the  distant 
twanging  of  a  native  guitar  played  by  some  musical 

1  Wangwana  was  the  general  term  in  the  East  African  interior 
by  which  the  "  Black  Arabs,"  the  Muhammadan  Arabized   ne- 
groes, were  known. 

2  Ruga-ruga   was    the   name   given   to    war-like   negroes  —  not 
necessarily   Muhammadans,  armed  by  the  Arabs  with  flint-lock 
guns   and   sent   to   raid   and   ravish   those  tribes   which    rebelled 
against  the  slave-traders. 


ROGER  ARRIVES  163 

porter ;  a  village  dog  sent  up  a  complacent  howl  or  two ; 
a  goat-sucker  churred;  a  laugh  came  from  the  Big- 
geru's  quarters. 

John,  not  without  a  hope  the  Consul  might  be  exag- 
gerating their  danger,  said :  "  Brethren  and  Sister 
Jamblin,  each  of  you  shall  speak  in  turn,  but  as  I  am 
regarded  as  your  leader  I  will  give  my  opinion  first.  I 
have  decided  that  my  wife  shall  leave  with  the  Consul 
for  the  coast,  perhaps  even  for  England,  unless  she 
recovers  her  health  and  things  quiet  down.  Cruelly 
hard  as  it  is  for  me  to  part  with  her,  I  feel  it  is  the 
right  thing  to  do.  As  for  me,  it  is  also  the  right  thing 
that  I  should  stop  here  till  all  danger  is  over  and  my 
place  can  be  taken  by  some  one  else.  Sister  Jamblin 
must  go  with  Lucy."  (Ann  murmured  she  would  do 
nothing  of  the  kind.)  "Yes,  Ann;  I  must  insist. 
Lucy  could  not  possibly  travel  alone  —  it  is  not  to  be 
thought  of.  .  .  ." 

Ann:     "  Why,  she  can  take  Halima " 

"  I  say,"  continued  John,  wiping  the  perspiration 
from  his  heated  face,  "  it  is  not  to  be  thought  of.  As 
an  unmarried  woman,  Ann,  you  could  not  remain  here 

with    us    men (Ann:     "Pooh,    nonsense!") 

"  Supposing  we  were  really  attacked  by  the  Arabs  and 
we  men  were  killed,  I  dare  not  think  what  might  be 
your  fate!  Brother  Bayley,  what  do  you  say?" 
Bay  ley:  "  Why,  that  I'll  stay  with  you." 
Anderson:  "  And  I  say  the  same.  You've  both 
spoken  like  jolly  good  Englishmen.  And  —  er  — 
let's  trust  in  the  Lord,  brethren.  He'll  see  us  through, 
He  won't  leave  His  servants  in  the  lurch.  To  think 
of  all  the  work  we've  put  into  this  place  and  all  the 
money  what's  been  spent  on  it!  What  are  we  going 
to  do  with  our  trade  goods  if  we  cut  and  run?  The 
Consul  can't  load  himself  up  with  them  —  and  our 
ivory  and  gum  copal  .  .  ." 

Brent  ham:     "  I  might  mention  here  I  can  only  spare 


1 64      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

about  twenty-five  porters  for  the  whole  five  of  you. 
We  must  travel  as  lightly  as  possible,  especially  if  the 
Stotts  want  help.  They  have  young  children,  I  be- 
lieve." 

Anderson:  "  Then  I  vote  we  stop.  Let  the  women 
go.  It  wouldn't  be  right  to  expose  them  to  the  risk. 
.  .  .  Ann,  what  do  you  say?  " 

Ann:  "  I  say  this.  Let  Sister  Baines  go  to  the 
coast.  She's  always  ailing  and  would  only  be  a  drag 
on  us  if  we  were  hard-pressed.  But  for  my  part  I 
stay  with  the  men,  at  any  rate  till  things  have  calmed 
down.  I'm  not  afraid.  I'll  soon  learn  to  handle  a 
rifle,  and  I'm  pretty  good  at  dressing  wounds.  And 
there's  my  class  of  girls.  It'd  pretty  nigh  break  my 
heart  if  I  went  away  and  they  came  to  grief  after  all 
that  training  I've  given  them  —  to  make  them  good 
wives  some  day." 

John  (shortly  and  decidedly)  :  "  You  can't  remain. 
I've  already  told  you  why.  In  this  matter  you  must 
bow  to  my  authority.  Lucy  in  any  case  is  too  ill  to 
stay  here  —  under  these  circumstances  —  and  it  is 
common  humanity  that  you  should  not  let  her  travel 
alone  to  the  coast.  When  our  anxiety  is  over,  you  and 
she  can  come  back.  .  .  ."  (Ann:  "Thank  you  for 
nothing"!")  "Well,  sir,  you  shall  know  our  definite 
decision  in  the  morning.  Meantime  you  must  be  tired, 
very  tired  indeed.  We  thank  you  heartily  for  coming 
to  our  assistance.  I'm  sure  you'd  like  now  to  retire." 
(Brentham  withdraws.)  "  Brethren,  before  we  sepa- 
rate let  us  put  our  case  before  God,  that  He  may  guide 
us  aright.  .  .  ." 

The  next  morning  the  decisive  answer  tendered  to 
the  Consul  was  that  the  men  would  remain  and  defend 
their  station.  Sisters  Baines  and  Jamblin  should  re- 
turn to  the  coast  with  Consul  Brentham. 

Lucy  forgot  all  about  her  anaemia  and  weak  back 


ROGER  ARRIVES  165 

and  tendency  to  dizziness  in  an  excited  packing  up  of 
necessaries  for  the  journey.  She  would  not  have  to 
take  with  her  more  than  her  clothes  and  a  few  invalid's 
provisions  and  appliances.  She  felt  terribly  elated, 
wildly  happy  at  times.  No  thought  of  danger  entered 
her  head  —  how  could  it,  with  Roger  as  escort  ?  At 
the  same  time,  the  sight  of  poor  John's  silent  grief  — 
too  deep  for  words  —  smote  her  with  reproachfulness ; 
and  Ann's  scornful  observation  of  her  moments  of 
sparkling  gaiety  seemed  sinister. 

The  situation  was  eased  by  Brentham  taking  John 
away  for  three  hours  to  confer  with  Chief  Mbogo  and 
his  counsellors.  Mbogo  was  sure  he  could  drive  ofT 
any  number  of  Arabs  or  Wangwana  if  they  came  to 
attack  his  villages  or  the  Mission  Station.  He  would 
send  out  word  to  the  Masai.  The  Masai  were  now 
his  friends  through  the  peace-making  of  the  mission- 
aries :  they  hated  the  Arabs  and  the  "  coast  people," 
and  said  they  would  side  with  the  Whites.  At  the 
same  time  he  accepted  gratefully  Brentham's  present 
of  ten  Snider  rifles  and  two  loads  of  ammunition.  An- 
other ten  rifles  and  a  thousand  rounds  of  ammunition 
were  added  to  the  armoury  of  the  Mission  Station,  as 
well  as  two  revolvers,  one  of  which  Ann  took  over, 
for  her  own  defence  on  the  road  or  that  of  her  "  Big- 
geru." 

Brentham  also  tendered  some  expert  advice  to  the 
Chief  on  the  subject  of  entrenchments  round  his 
stronghold.  The  Mission  Station  already  possessed 
a  pretty  strong  stockade  and  a  moat  outside  it.  A  few 
years  previously  attacks  from  any  quarter  might  be 
expected  —  Muhammadan  slave-traders,  impulsive  Ma- 
sai, thievish  Wagogo.  If  the  first  rush  could  be 
checked  the  attack  was  seldom  persisted  in. 

The  Consul's  safari  as  it  passed  down  the  western 


1 66      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

slopes  of  the  Ulunga  Hills  l  must  have  looked  quite 
imposing  to  the- natives  who  watched  its  departure  be- 
hind their  dracasna  and  euphorbia  hedges.  First 
marched  Brentham  himself  with  a  stout  staff  and  with 
his  gun-carrier  at  his  heels.  Then  came  the  caravan 
headman  and  guide,  the  Mwinyi-mpara  or  Kiongozi, 
as  he  was  styled.  He  carried  a  small  British  ensign 
and  was  followed  by  twenty-five  armed  porters  with 
Brentham's  personal  loads,  each,  however,  with  a  Sni- 
der rifle  and  a  neat  uniform  of  cotton  vest  and 
breeches.  Next  followed  Ann  Jamblin,  riding  astride 
the  Consul's  Maskat  donkey,  every  now  and  then 
glancing  back  on  her  fifteen  Amazon  porters,  the  pick 
of  her  Big-geru  class  who  carried  their  mistress's 
effects  in  bundles  on  their  woolly  heads.  Behind  them 
was  Lucy  in  her  machila,  its  long  pole  borne  on  the 
shoulders  of  two  strapping  Walunga,  with  a  relief  crew 
behind  of  four  other  men  of  fine  musculature.  After 
that  followed  about  fifty  porters  poising  on  their  heads 
the  heavier  baggage  —  bundles  of  tents,  bedding,  wa- 
ter-tight tin  boxes,  bags  of  rice,  bales  of  cloth,  boxes 
of  beads,  cases  of  ammunition,  cooking  implements. 
Trotting  by  the  side  of  this  long  file  of  men  were  two 
milch  goats,  bleating  and  baaing,  but  thoroughly  en- 
joying the  journey;  they  were  intended  to  provide  milk 
for  the  ladies'  tea.  One  of  the  two  wras  a  special  pet 
of  Lucy's.  To  look  after  the  goats  was  a  little  naked 
Mgogo  boy  —  a  released  slave  —  who  ran  and  frol- 
icked with  them,  and  kept  the  porters  amused  by  his 
impudent  mimicry  of  the  white  people.  Lastly  in  the 
rear  of  the  caravan  was  a  guard  of  ten  gunmen  with- 
out loads  to  embarrass  their  quick  movements. 

Brentham  and  his  charges  were  bound  for  the  Stotts' 
station  of  Burungi,  three  or  four  days'  journey  —  say, 
fifty  miles  —  to  the  west.  Lucy  felt  already  many 

1  Ulunga  was  the  southern  portion  of  a  country  called  "  Ngulu  " 
or  "  Nguru." 


ROGER  ARRIVES  167 

degrees  better  in  health,  though  she  thought  it  only 
decent  to  conceal  her  returning  vigour  and  new-found 
animation.  The  picnic  meals  by  the  road  side  stimu- 
lated her  appetite ;  her  eye  took  pleasure  in  the  changes 
of  scenery,  the  new  panoramas  of  plain  and  wilderness 
that  unfolded  themselves  as  she  was  swayingly  borne 
along.  Ann  seemed  sombre  and  preoccupied,  as  though 
noting  land-marks  for  after  recognition.  Occasion- 
ally she  pointed  to  this  and  that  feature  in  the  land- 
scape and  asked  her  Big-geru  for  its  native  name. 

The  very  hot  weather  which  closes  the  dry  season 
made  itself  felt,  so  that  the  start  from  Hangodi  had 
been  begun  in  the  early  morning  twilight,  and  each 
succeeding  morning  they  took  to  the  road  at  5.30. 
They  jogged  along,  with  an  occasional  five  minutes' 
rest,  till  half-past  ten  or  until  about  that  time  they  had 
found  a  stream  valley  or  a  water  hole  which  contained 
water  not  too  bad  for  cooking  purposes.  Then  the 
caravan  halted  for  the  day  in  such  shade  as  might  be 
found,  and  the  march  was  not  resumed  till  5  p.m. 

Owing  to  the  brilliancy  of  the  moonlight  it  might  be 
continued  well  into  the  night.  During  the  long  mid- 
day halt,  the  Goanese  cook,  aided  by  Halima  and  sev- 
eral porters  and  Brentham's  Swahili  butler,  would  pre- 
pare really  very  creditable  little  meals,  and  after  eating 
the  travellers  would  lie  on  unfolded  deck  chairs  in 
some  piece  of  shade  where  the  hard  ground  had  been 
swept  clear  of  snakes,  insects  or  scorpions.  Brentham, 
if  the  heat  were  not  too  scorching,  might  wander  with 
a  shot-gun  near  by  to  try  for  the  chance  of  a  guinea- 
fowl  or  francolin  or  tiny  antelope. 

At  four  o'clock  they  had  tea  with  goat's  milk ;  and 
at  five  resumed  their  journey.  The  tents  were  pitched 
by  moonlight  and  the  beds  made  by  the  light  of  a 
candle  lantern.  Toilet  processes  were  very  summary; 
there  was  all  too  little  water  to  wash  in  and  the  trav- 
ellers must  just  sleep  in  their  clothes  and  put  any  ideas 


1 68      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

of  effective  ablutions  out  of  their  heads  till  they  reached 
the  water  supply  at  the  Stotts'  station.  The  night 
camp  was  hastily  surrounded  by  a  thorn  hedge  cut 
from  the  acacia  trees,  and  big  fires  were  lighted  to  keep 
off  lions  and  hyenas.  Blacks  and  whites  had  to  sleep 
in  close  proximity  and  the  treasured  goats  and  donkey 
in  the  middle  of  the  circle  of  loads. 

The  country  they  marched  over  —  a  northward  ex- 
tension of  the  "  Mkunda  mkali  "  or  "  Bitter  waste  " — 
was  at  first  steppe-like,  then  rocky  and  rising  in  a  series 
of  escarpments.  Almost  its  only  trees  seemed  to  be 
flat-topped  acacias,  without  leafage  at  this  season,  glis- 
tening in  the  blazing  sun  and  studded  with  long  white 
thorns.  The  thin  grass  was  mostly  burnt;  neverthe- 
less it  was  frequented  by  much  game,  and  the  land  was 
apparently  devoid  of  human  inhabitants.  Brentham, 
always  obsessed  by  the  fear  of  food  scarcity,  but 
hardly  liking  to  absent  himself  from  the  line  of  march 
and  his  following  caravan,  started  each  morning  a 
few  minutes  ahead  of  the  rest  and  walked  in  advance 
as  a  pioneer,  with  his  gun-carrier  at  his  elbow.  In  this 
way  he  sometimes  brought  down,  close  to  the  path,  an 
inquisitive  Grant's  gazelle  or  hartebeest;  or  a  zebra 
out  of  the  many  herds  which  closed  up  to  espy  the 
distant  concourse  of  men  and  then  dissolved  into  a 
cloud  of  dust  at  the  report  of  the  gun.  Even  at  this 
lean  season  of  the  year  the  male  zebras  were  in  good 
condition.  Their  yellow  fat  and  juicy,  sickly-sweet 
flesh  delighted  the  hungry  porters. 

On  the  early  morning  of  the  fourth  day,  the  expedi- 
tion passed  a  few  parched  native  plantations  and  one 
or  two  burnt  huts  and,  as  the  sun  rose,  marched  into 
the  irregular  circle  of  the  Stott  station,  across  a  half- 
dry  water-course,  and  found  no  human  being  to  greet 
it.  Silence  and  partially  burnt  buildings  of  clay  and 
thatch,  torn  paper,  vultures  on  the  scorched  trees, 
broken  crockery,  scraps  of  cloth,  one  or  two  pools  of 


ROGER  ARRIVES  169 

dried  blood,  empty  cartridge-cases,  and  the  torn  sack- 
ing and  splintered  boards  of  packing-cases. 

"  This  is  pretty  ghastly,  Miss  Jamblin,"  said  Bren- 
tham,  returning  to  the  hastily-cleaned  camp  amid  the 
ruins  of  the  Mission  Station. 

Lucy,  feeling  she  could  do  nothing  to  help  and  had 
better  not  look  at  the  caked  patches  of  dried  blood 
which  the  porters  were  removing,  had  withdrawn  her- 
self to  a  folding  chair  placed  by  Halima  under  the 
thin  shade  of  a  fire-scorched  tree.  Ann  was  examin- 
ing the  vestiges  of  the  Stott  property  which  the  looters 
had  left  behind :  school  books  and  primers  in  the  Swa- 
hili  language,  empty  ink-pots,  broken  slates,  enamelled 
iron  plates  and  some  substantial  tables  of  native  tim- 
ber, too  heavy  for  either  the  fugitives  or  their  enemies 
to  carry  away.  Ann's  white  solar  "  topi  "  and  white 
dress  were  already  smudged  and  sooted  from  the  burnt 
wood  and  thatch. 

"Ghastly,  isn't  it!"  he  went  on.  "I've  just  re- 
turned from  a  reconnaissance  in  which  we  rounded  up 
three  Masai  youths  —  not  warriors  but  the  hulking 
boys  that  attend  on  the  spearmen.  Two  men  in  my 
safari  understand  Masai  and  they  are  now  trying  to 
make  out  the  story  these  boys  tell.  They  evidently 
deny  emphatically  that  the  Stotts  were  killed.  They 
keep  pointing  to  the  north-west  as  the  direction  in 
which  they  have  gone,  and  say  every  now  and  then 
'  Irangi.'  My  interpreters  infer  that  this  place  was 
attacked  about  a  week  ago  by  a  party  of  Ruga-ruga 
coming  from  the  Nyaturu  country  and  travelling  to- 
wards the  coast.  They  besieged  the  station,  and  killed 
some  of  the  Mission  boys,  but  the  Stotts  apparently 
were  not  hurt.  They  defended  themselves  for  some 
time,  till  a  party  of  Masai  came  to  their  relief,  and 
then  the  Ruga-ruga  and  '  black  '  Arabs  were  beaten 
off.  Nevertheless  the  Stotts  left  the  station  afterwards 


170      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

and  went  away  to  the  north-west  with  the  Masai  escort- 
ing them.  ...  I  want  to  see  if  I  get  on  their  tracks 
or  if  I  can  find  any  real  natives  who  saw  the  attack. 
.  .  .  You  seem  to  have  a  head  on  your  shoulders  .  .  . 
and  an  influence  over  the  natives.  I'll  leave  all  but 
five  of  the  men  here  under  your  orders.  Already 
they're  at  work  reconstructing  the  '  boma.'  I  propose 
skirmishing  around  and  finding  out  also  if  the  Arabs 
and  Ruga-ruga  are  still  in  the  neighbourhood.  I'll  be 
back  before  dark.  .  .  ." 

Ann:  "  You'd  much  better  give  up  such  a  wild- 
goose  chase  as  looking  for  the  Stotts.  Make  for  Kili- 
manjaro and  the  Mvita  coast  with  Lucy.  We've  got 
mission  stations  in  Taita  and  at  Jomvu,  near  Mvita, 
where  you  could  place  her  in  comparative  safety.  I'd 
much  rather  return  to  Hangodi  instead  of  floundering 
about  in  the  wilderness,  mad  with  thirst  and  unable  to 
wash.  I'm  only  a  drag  on  you  with  my  women  por- 
ters whom  your  men  can't  leave  alone  —  I  daren't  take 
my  eyes  off  them.  Lucy'll  soon  be  well  enough  to 
ride  your  donkey  —  which  I'm  at  present  using.  If 
the  Arabs  haven't  plundered  the  Wagogo  or  if  there 
are  Masai  bands  in  the  neighbourhood  you  could  easily 
buy  a  few  donkeys  —  Masai  breed,  you  know. 
They're  quickly  broken  in  to  riding,  especially  with 
your  Maskat  donkey  to  show  'em  how.  And  then 
you  could  travel  much  quicker.  I  don't  think  you'll 
have  trouble  with  the  Arabs  farther  north.  It's  a 
Masai  country,  and  the  Masai  and  the  Muhammadans 
are  at  daggers  drawn.  .  .  ." 

Brentham  (hesitating)  :  "  No.  I  don't  think  I 
ought  to  let  you  go  ...  I  ..."  (His  thoughts  were 
saying:  'Let  her  go.  She's  a  tiresome  termagant, 
she,  with  her  fifteen  women  porters  who'll  cause  the 
deuce-and-all  of  a  lot  of  trouble  before  we've  gone  far. 
It  would  be  lovely  to  have  a  long  journey  back  to  the 
coast  with  Lucy.  Of  course  I'd  respect  her.  I  should 


ROGER  ARRIVES  171 

simply  treat  her  as  a  sister  "...  and  his  pulses  quick- 
ened). .  .  . 

Ann:  " Let  me  go?  I'm  my  own  mistress  and  not 
going  to  be  ordered  about  by  anybody.  If  I  choose 
to  go  back,  I'll  go,  even  if  I  have  to  walk  all  the  way. 
But  there!  I  don't  want  to  be  tiresome.  You  go  off 
on  your  prospecting  and  leave  Lucy  in  my  charge.  I'll 
promise  not  to  do  a  bolt  till  you  return  —  and  when- 
ever I  promise,  I  keep  my  promise." 

(Lucy  came  up  at  this  juncture  and  was  told  rather 
impatiently  by  Ann  the  dilemma  in  which  the  three  of 
them  were  placed.)  Captain  Brentham  turned  away, 
called  up  his  headman,  gave  him  instructions,  and 
finally  went  off  with  five  gunmen  and  the  three  Masai 
youths.  These  were  put  in  a  good  humour  by  being 
crammed  with  broiled  meat  and  rice,  the  latter  a  food 
they  had  never  tasted  before,  but  accepted  without  de- 
mur at  the  hands  of  the  godlike  white  man. 

Ann,  thus  placed  in  authority,  set  to  work  to  carry 
out  her  plans.  She  had  the  interior  of  the  station 
circle  cleaned  as  much  as  possible  of  half-burnt  house 
material,  and  gathered  together  what  remained  in  the 
ruins  of  books,  clothes,  trade  goods.  The  looting  had 
evidently  been  very  hurried,  and  no  doubt  the  Stotts 
had  conveyed  some  things  with  them  on  their  retreat. 
Lucy,  sharply  ordered  by  Ann  not  to  over-exert  her- 
self, sat  in  the  shade  in  a  deck  chair,  very  apprehensive 
as  to  the  future  and  worried  that  Roger  should  have 
gone  away. 

The  news  that  white  people  were  back  at  Burungi 
—  as  this  station  was  called  —  penetrated  quickly 
through  this  seemingly  deserted  region.  So  often  in 
Africa  there  occurs  this  wireless  telegraphy,  really  due 
perhaps  to  the  lurking  here  and  there  in  the  brush  and 
herbage  of  invisible  natives,  observing  what  goes  on 
and  bounding  away  noiselessly  to  carry  the  news  to 
other  prowlers.  In  the  afternoon  wh'en  Ann  within 


172      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

the  thorn  enclosure  had  made  things  a  little  more  tidy 
and  presentable  there  appeared  in  the  middle  distance 
numbers  of  Wagogo  warriors  gazing  at  the  new  ar- 
rivals with  kindly  neutrality,  occasionally  calling  out 
friendly,  deprecatory  greetings.  Encouraged  by  Ann's 
answering  shouts  in  Kagulu  they  approached  the 
"  boma,"  and  even  ventured  within  the  camp  enclosure, 
squatting  then  on  their  heels  to  exchange  information. 
Their  confidence  was  sealed  by  little  gifts  of  tobacco. 
The  attack  on  the  Mission  Station  was  described.  The 
white  people  had  been  taken  by  surprise,  but  had  held 
their  own  till  the  Wagogo  and  Masai  came  to  their 
assistance.  The  Ruga-ruga  shot  fire-arrows  in  among 
the  thatched  roofs  and  set  fire  to  some  of  the  houses. 
They  even  broke  in  through  one  part  of  the  "  boma," 
but  three  of  them  were  killed  by  the  white  man's  peo- 
ple. 

The  fight  had  lasted  half-a-day  and  one  day.  Then 
the  Wangwana  had  drawn  off  —  to  the  south.  Two 
days  more  and  the  white  people  had  gone  —  there  were 
the  white  man  — "  Sitoto,"  they  called  him  —  and  the 
white  woman  chief  —  she  was  a  great  "  doctor  "•  —  and 
three  white  children  .  .  .  they  had  all  gone  off  with 
a  party  of  the  Masai  —  to  the  north  somewhere.  The 
Masai  had  sold  them  donkeys  to  ride.  Some  Wagogo 
had  gone  with  them.  It  was  perhaps  four  days  since 
they  went  away.  No !  the  Wagogo  had  not  plundered 
the  white  man's  place.  They  were  frightened  to  come 
there  because  of  the  white  man's  "  medicine."  .  .  . 

"  Then  how  did  you  get  that?  "  said  Ann,  pointing 
to  a  soiled  white  petticoat  which  an  elderly  man  wore 
over  one  shoulder  and  across  his  chest. 

"  That  ?  That  had  been  given  him  by  the  white 
woman  herself  for  running  to  summon  the  Masai."  .  .  . 

"  See  here,"  said  Ann,  in  fragmentary  Kagulu. 
"  You've  got  donkeys  —  Masai  donkeys  —  among  you. 
The  Ruga-ruga  have  not  raided  you.  You  bring  me 


ROGER  ARRIVES  173 

here  three  good  strong  donkeys  and  I  will  buy  them 
for  a  good  price :  white  cloth,  brass  rings,  iron  wire, 
red  cloth  and  gunpowder." 

They  conferred  among  themselves  and  thought  they 
might  produce  three  donkeys  —  for  a  price. 

"  Well,  then  fetch  them  —  at  once.  Otherwise  the 
big  white  man,  the  great  chief  of  all  the  white  men  on 
the  coast,  the  Balozi,  will  believe  you  helped  to  plunder 
this  station  and  make  you  give  up  the  property  you've 
stolen."  .  .  . 

Roger  returned  late  that  evening  in  brilliant  moon- 
light to  find  that  Ann  had  purchased  with  his  trade 
goods  three  good  stout  grey  asses  with  broad  shoulder 
stripes.  One  she  reserved  for  herself,  the  other  two 
she  transferred  to  Brentham.  They  would  serve  for 
him  to  ride  and  also  provide  his  Goanese  cook  with  a 
mount.  [This  Portuguese-Indian  was  a  very  poor 
marcher  and  much  inclined  to  fever ;  yet  in  some  ways 
the  second  most  important  person  of  the  caravan,  de- 
cent cooking  being  such  an  enormous  help  to  good 
health  in  Africa.]  Lucy,  who  had  grown  much 
stronger  for  this  change  and  excitement,  could  ride  the 
Maskat  donkey  and  her  hammock  men  could  return 
to  Hangodi  with  some  of  Ann's  loads. 

Ann  would  further  borrow  five  of  Brentham's  gun- 
men to  escort  her  and  her  fifteen  women-porters  —  her 
Big-geru  —  back  to  Hangodi.  She  had  also  engaged 
at  extravagant  pay  a  dozen  of  the  Wagogo,  fleet  of 
foot  and  brave  hunters.  These,  armed  with  their  long- 
bladed  spears,  would  guide  and  precede  her  little  party, 
scaring  away  the  wild  beasts  by  their  cries.  Lions 
and  rhinoceroses  were  distinctly  a  danger  to  be  reck- 
oned with.  ...  By  forced  marching,  especially  at 
night,  Ann  would  be  back  at  Hangodi  in  two  days. 
It  was  therefore  unwise  to  miss  a  single  moonlight 
night  as  the  moon  would  soon  be  on  the  wane.  The 
Ruga-ruga  and  Wangwana  never  attacked  at  night,  and 


i74      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

if  they  were  anywhere  in  the  neighbourhood  —  which 
the  Wagogo  scouts  would  soon  find  out  —  the  party 
would  hide  in  the  daylight  hours. 

Meantime  Brentham  and  Lucy  could  remain  en- 
camped at  Burungi  awaiting  the  return  of  Ann's  escort. 
If  the  message  was  "All's  well,"  they  could  start  off 
for  the  coast  by  the  roundabout  northern  route.  .  .  . 

"  You  seem  to  be  a  very  capable  woman,"  said  Bren- 
tham, "  as  well  as  being  an  obstinate  one.  I  agree 
to  your  plan,  though  I  have  a  presentiment  I  may 
regret  it.  If  you  change  your  mind  and  come  back 
I  shan't  reproach  you  for  being  fickle.  And  besides, 
you  may  bring  us  later  news.  I  must  in  any  case 
stay  here  for  a  few  days  to  prepare  for  the  big  march. 
I  must  shoot  game  and  have  a  lot  of  '  biltong ' *  made 
for  the  men.  .  .  ." 

"  I'm  glad  you  agree,"  said  Ann.  "  I  know  I  shall 
be  in  the  right  place  at  Hangodi  —  for  many  reasons. 
As  it  is,  I've  already  had  an  idea.  The  Stotts  seem 
to  have  been  saved  by  the  Masai.  The  Masai  that 
our  Walunga  people  call  '  Wahumba '  are  on  good 
terms  with  us.  We  brought  about  peace  between  them 
and  Mbogo.  They  come  to  our  station  to  trade  and 
we  have  cured  several  of  their  wounded  men  from  bad 
lion  bites.  We  will  send  messengers  to  the  Humba 
Masai  asking  for  a  large  war  party  of  spearmen  to 
await  down  below  in  the  plains  any  attack  by  the 
Arabs.  I  think  the  mere  knowledge  the  Masai  are 
there  will  keep  the  Arabs  from  coming  near  Ulunga." 

So  the  next  morning  Ann  rode  off  at  five  o'clock 
astride  her  Masai  donkey,  on  which  some  makeshift 
arrangement  of  padded  cloths  had  been  tied  by  way  of 
saddle.  Her  buxom  Big-geru  hoisted  their  light  loads 
and  struck  up  a  Moody  and  Sankey  hymn  translated 
by  Ann  into  Kagulu.  The  grinning  Wanyamwezi 

1  Strips  of  lean  meat  dried  in  the  sun  and  thus  preserved  for 
a  considerable  time  in  dry  weather. 


ROGER  ARRIVES  175 

gunmen  brought  up  the  rear,  and  the  wild,  unclothed 
Wagogo  with  fantastic  ostrich  feather  or  zebra-mane 
head-dresses  dashed  on  ahead,  whooping  and  leaping 
and  shouting  their  determination  to  scare  away  the 
beasts  of  the  field  from  the  white  woman-chief  who 
talked  like  a  man. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE    HAPPY    VALLEY 

ROGER,  left  alone  with  Lucy,  resolved  he  would 
"  do  the  right  thing,"  clenched  his  teeth  so  to 
speak  on  the  vow.  He  was  the  more  fiercely  deter- 
mined to  act  honourably  because  he  felt  himself  to  be 
fighting  against  her  own  weakness  of  fibre,  against  her 
overpowering  inclination  as  well  as  his  own.  Her  at- 
tractiveness for  him  had  greatly  increased  since  the 
renewal  of  their  comradeship.  In  the  early  days  of  the 
acquaintance,  though  her  prettiness  and  virginal  charm 
were  appealing,  she  had  the  naivete  and  insipidity  of  an 
inexperienced  girl  which  soon  weary  a  man  of  the 
world  who  tires  of  the  relation  between  master  and 
pupil.  Now  she  was  a  married  woman ;  tempered, 
rendered  more  subtle  by  suffering  and  experience  of 
mankind,  who  was  readier  to  express  her  feelings 
through  her  eyes  and  her  reticence  than  by  direct 
speech.  She  talked  less  unreflectingly,  and  the  things 
she  said  were  more  due  to  her  own  observation  and 
reasoning  than  second-hand  opinions  picked  up  from 
other  people. 

Ann,  in  the  week  in  which  he  had  seen  the  two 
women  together,  had  been  just  the  right  foil  to  throw 
up  Lucy's  charming  femininity,  her  refinement  in  dress 
and  appearance  and  in  the  tones  of  her  voice.  Ann 
by  contrast  was  an  impudent  self-assertive  virago  with 
the  worth  at  best  of  a  good  drudge.  After  a  year  and 
a  half's  absence  from  Europe  he  made  this  rediscovery 
of  Lucy,  set  against  a  background  of  Savage  Africa  — 
coarse  landscapes,  jagged  rocks,  unwieldy  trees,  bush 

176 


THE  HAPPY  VALLEY  177 

conflagrations,  naked  men,  wild  beasts  just  kept  at  bay. 
(On  moonlight  nights  they  could  actually  descry  the 
grey-white  forms  of  lions  and  hyenas  padding  noise- 
lessly round  the  precincts  of  their  boma.)  These  vio- 
lent incongruities  made  her  seem  to  him  a  being  of 
exquisite  refinement  and  yet  of  physical  charm.  Re- 
turning health,  intense  happiness,  the  dawning  hope 
of  a  bright  future  were  dispelling  the  anaemia  and  giv- 
ing back  to  her  face  and  neck  the  tinted  white  of  a 
healthy  skin,  warmed  in  tone  by  a  good  circulation. 
There  was  a  sparkle  of  animation  in  her  violet  eyes 
and  a  new  lustre  in  her  brown  gold  hair. 

It  would  be  a  good  thing  for  both,  he  felt,  if  he 
found  the  Stotts  as  soon  as  possible  and  induced  them 
to  join  company  in  a  march  to  the  coast.  His  career  — 
Yes,  he  must  remember  that.  His  career  above  all 
things.  He  must  not  be  turned  aside  from  his  great 
ambitions  by  any  woman.  Yet  he  had  missed  fire  over 
the  Unguja  appointment  and  wanted  consolation  else- 
where. It  was  rather  weary  always  to  be  at  work,  in 
an  office,  or  in  the  field :  never  to  settle  down  to  a 
honeymoon  and  the  joys  of  domesticity.  Perhaps  he 
should  have  taken  another  line  —  the  Colonial  Office 
and  administrative  work,  not  the  Foreign  Office  and 
adventurous  diplomacy  in  Savage  Africa.  .  .  .  He 
wanted  to  explore,  create,  and  then  administer  a  great 
African  Empire,  tasks  infinitely  above  the  mean  ca- 
pacity of  a  Godfrey  Dewburn  or  a  Spencer  Bazzard. 
Why  could  he  not  now  —  straight  away  —  plunge  into 
the  vast  unknown  which  lay  before  him  to  the  north, 
to  the  north-west?  Where  had  Stanley  disappeared 
to?  What  had  become  of  Emin?  What  was  hap- 
pening in  Uganda  since  the  death  of  Mutesa?  What 
unsolved  mysteries  lay  west  of  the  Victoria  Nyanza, 
north  of  Tanganyika,  south  of  the  Bahr-al-ghazal  ? 
Should  he  take  Lucy  to  his  heart,  throw  conventions 
and  commissions  to  the  winds,  and  start  away  with  her 


178      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

on  a  wonderful  journey  of  discovery,  leaving  the  world 
and  the  Rev.  John  Baines  to  say  what  they  liked,  and 
covering  his  private  treachery  by  his  amazing  discov- 


eries : 


Nonsense!  Why,  Queen  Victoria  would  never 
overlook  this  act  of  adultery.  He  might  discover 
twenty  lakes  and  name  them  all  after  princes  of  her 
family  or  annex  gold  mines  and  pipes  of  diamonds 
and  she  would  refuse  the  accolade,  and  Society  at  her 
bidding  would  close  its  ranks  against  the  dishonoured 
missionary's  wife.  Besides,  he  had  barely  enough 
trade  goods  with  which  to  pay  his  way  back  to  the 
coast,  especially  by  a  round-about  route.  The  Afri- 
can soon  looks  coldly  on  the  god-like  white  man  if  he 
has  no  more  beads,  cloth,  copper  wire,  knives,  and 
gun-caps  with  which  to  pay  road  dues,  "  customs  "  or 
good-will  presents. 

And  his  armed  porters?  They  were  only  engaged 
for  a  six-months'  safari.  They  must  be  fed  and  paid 
or  they  would  desert.  .  .  .  He  must  put  all  this  non- 
sense out  of  his  head  —  take  a  few  pills,  a  little  bro- 
mide —  tire  himself  out  every  day  big  game  shooting 
or  scouting  till  the  men  sent  with  Ann  Jamblin  re- 
turned with  their  news. 

If  he  took  all  this  exercise,  he  would  not  lie  awake 
at  night  in  his  hot  tent,  under  his  mosquito  curtain 
longing,  aching  to  go  to  Lucy's  quarters  and  say,  "  I 
love  you:  let  us  fight  against  it  no  longer.  We  may 
all  be  dead  a  month  hence." 

To  guard  against  such  impulses  he  had  insisted  on 
Halima's  sleeping  on  an  Unguja  mat  in  her  mistress's 
tent,  and  had  surrounded  the  tent  with  a  square  of 
reed  fence  which  gave  her  a  greater  degree  of  privacy 
than  the  wretched  tent  afforded.  Within  this  there 
was  space  for  a  bathroom  and  a  "  sitting-room,"  a 
shaded  retreat  to  which  she  could  retire  for  a  siesta  or 
a  confabulation  with  Halima  who  was  still  giving  her 


THE  HAPPY  VALLEY  179 

instruction  in  Swahili.  Outside  this  "  harim  " —  as 
his  men  who  constructed  it  certainly  took  it  to  be  — 
there  was  a  "  baraza "  common  to  them  both :  a 
thatched  shelter  open  all  round.  Here  the  camp  table 
was  placed  for  meals. 

Roger  determined  to  shut  Lucy  out  of  his  thoughts 
as  much  as  possible,  to  think  only  for  the  day,  for  the 
dangers  by  which  they  were  surrounded,  the  hundred 
risks  which  attended  their  ever  getting  back  to  civiliza- 
tion. ...  As  soon  as  they  could  reach  the  coast  he 
would  send  Lucy  to  England  and  return  to  his  Con- 
sulate at  Medinat-al-barkah.  ...  Of  course,  should 
John  Baines  die  of  fever  —  missionaries  often  did  — 
or  —  if  —  he  were  killed?  .  .  .  Suppose  his  station 
really  was  attacked  .  .  .  ?  But  then,  again,  such 
thoughts  as  these  were  of  the  order  of  David's  when 
he  hankered  after  Bathsheba.  .  .  . 

And  then  Lucy,  again,  Lucy  might  die  of  fever  — 
she  scarcely  seemed  cut  out  for  an  African  life,  which 
is  why  he  had  begun  pitying  her.  .  .  . 

"  I've  had  perfectly  splendid  sport  to-day,"  said 
Roger,  standing  before  Lucy's  "  baraza  "  where  the 
camp  table  was  laid  for  tea.  "  I've  shot  a  rhino  — 
they're  cutting  it  up  now  —  two  hartebeests,  and  two 
impala.  That'll  give  us  all  the  '  biltong  '  we  can  carry. 
I'm  filthily  dirty,  as  you  can  see  —  ash  and  charcoal 
from  the  burnt  bush,  and  sweat  —  God !  It  has  been 
sweltering!  —  and  the  run  after  that  —  and  from 
that  —  rhino!  No.  I'm  not  wounded  —  there's  no 
need  for  emotion  —  but  the  rhino  as  he  charged  —  and 
/  doubled  —  squirted  blood  over  me  from  his  nos- 
trils —  I  must  look  like  a  fighting  chimney  sweep  —  I'll 
go  and  have  a  bath  and  then  you  shall  give  me  tea." 

"  Don't  be  long,"  said  Lucy.  "  There's  such  lots  to 
talk  about.  Your  men  have  come  back  from  Hangodi 
with  a  note  to  me  from  John!  He  says  so  far  'all's 


i8o      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

well.'  And  two  Masai,  Halima  says,  are  waiting  to 
see  you.  They  keep  saying  '  Sitoto,'  which  means,  I 
suppose,  some  news  about  the  Stotts'  whereabouts. 
How  exciting  it's  all  getting.  I  am  enjoying  it!  " 

"Halima"  (to  her  maid):  "  Waambia  watu  wa 
mpishi  tunataka  chai,  marra  moja !  " 

Four  days  afterwards,  everything  being  ready  for 
the  fresh  venture  into  the  unknown,  loads  lightened 
and  tightened,  and  the  biltong  sufficiently  dry  to  be 
tied  on  top  of  the  loads  (imparting  a  disagreeable  smell 
of  a  butcher's  shop  to  the  caravan  as  it  passed  in  single 
file),  they  set  out  with  Masai  guides  to  find  the  Stotts. 
They  travelled  over  the  water-parting  from  the  rivers 
flowing  to  the  Indian  Ocean  to  those  that  ended  in 
vague  marshes  and  bitter  lakes.  They  climbed  great 
escarpments  and  descended  into  broad  valleys  between 
high  cliffs  and  found  themselves  amongst  strange  peo- 
ples, chiefly  pastoral,  keepers  of  great  herds  of  sleek, 
humped  cattle,  of  dwarf  African  goats  and  fat-tailed 
sheep. 

The  first  of  these,  the  Warangi,  were  fortunately 
allied  in  speech  to  the  Wagogo  —  so  could  be  communi- 
cated with.  They  were  a  truculent  lot,  inclined  to 
make  trouble  with  strangers.  They  seemed  on  this 
occasion,  however,  too  much  excited  over  affairs  of 
their  own  to  be  much  interested  in  the  arrival  of  white 
folk,  whom  they  had  probably  never  seen  before  except 
in  the  form  of  pale-faced  Arabs.  They  replied  briefly 
that  a  white  man  and  woman  and  their  children  had 
preceded  Brentham's  party  by  a  few  days  —  when  the 
moon  was  still  at  the  full.  They  were  accompanied 
by  a  band  of  Masai  with  whom  the  Warangi  were 
friends.  .  .  . 

"Are  there  any  Arabs  here?"  asked  Brentham 
through  his  interpreter.  "Waalabu?"  No!  They 
came  sometimes  to  buy  ivory,  but  on  their  last  visit 


THE  HAPPY  VALLEY  181 

they  had  tried  to  carry  off  some  Rangi  people  as  slaves, 
and  if  they  showed  their  faces  again  in  Burangi,  they 
would  be  driven  away. 

"  Then  what  are  you  all  so  excited  about?  " 
They  replied  it  was  an  affair  of  their  clan,  of  the 
people  who  lived  in  these  villages.  Their  young  mar- 
ried men  had  gone  out  this  dry  season  to  kill  elephants 
as  was  their  custom,  but  had  returned  after  three 
months  with  no  luck  at  all :  hardly  a  tusk  worth  looking 
at,  very  little  meat,  and  two  men  killed  by  the  elephants. 
There  could  be  but  one  explanation  for  this.  Their 
wives  had  been  unfaithful  to  them  as  soon  as  their 
backs  were  turned.  It  was  well  known  that  if  a  wife 
and  husband  were  separated  and  the  wife  was  unfaith- 
ful, a  misfortune  at  once  fell  on  the  husband.  Conse- 
quently the  custom  of  their  tribe  in  such  cases  was  to 
burn  the  guilty  women  on  large  pyres  of  brushwood. 
These  pyres  were  now  finished  —  the  white  man  could 
see  them  there  along  the  bank  of  the  river.  .  .  .  Pres- 
ently the  adulterous  ladies  whose  husbands  had  re- 
turned from  the  luckless  elephant-shoot  would  be  led 
out,  tied  to  the  brushwood  bundles,  and  set  on  fire. 
He  might  stay  and  witness  the  imposing  spectacle  if 
he  chose.  They  learnt  that  he  too  was  accompanied 
by  a  wife  —  a  white  woman.  It  might  be  a  moral 
lesson  to  her  —  if  white  women  were  ever  unfaith- 
ful. .  .  . 

Roger  begged  the  Warangi  to  spare  the  women  this 
time.  By  and  bye  he  would  come  back  to  them  and 
explain  the  whole  mystery  of  luck  in  sport  and  the 
ensuring  of  an  accurate  aim,  perhaps  give  them  a 
"  medicine,"  to  produce  the  result  they  wanted.  But 
meantime  he  assured  them  that  if  they  burnt  so  much 
as  one  woman's  little  finger  a  terrible  curse  would  fall 
on  the  land. 

Lucy  asked  what  all  this  talk  was  about,  and  he 


1 82      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

replied:  "Oh,  nothing  very  important  —  big  game 
shooting."  She  was  preoccupied  with  pleasanter  sub- 
jects, the  greater  coolness  of  the  air  now  that  they  had 
ascended  to  a  higher  level,  the  new  green  grass  of 
the  coming  spring,  and  her  own  greatly  improved 
health.  .  .  . 

"If  all  goes  well,"  said  Roger,  "  we  ought  to  reach 
the  place  where  the  Stotts  are  in  two  long  days' 
march." 

"  Shall  we?  I'm  rather  sorry,  as  though  something 
was  going  to  break  our  delicious  dream.  I  should  like 
to  go  on  and  on  like  this  for  a  year.  .  .  ." 

"And  what  about  my  official  duties?  I,  too,  am 
enjoying  this  to  the  full,  but  I  am  worried  about 
whether  I  have  done  the  right  thing.  .  .  .  With  a  de- 
sire to  please  every  one  all  round  I  sometimes  fancy  I 
have  embarked  on  a  perilous  adventure.  .  .  .  How- 
ever we  must  hope  for  the  best.  Of  course  all  this  is 
absolutely  new  ground.  I  ought  to  be  earning  a  Geo- 
graphical medal;  instead  of  which  I  shall  only  get  an 
official  rebuke.  .  .  .  Did  you  notice  that  we  seem  to 
have  entered  a  new  watershed?" 

Lucy:  "  Although  I  taught  Geography  at  school,  I 
never  really  understood  what  a  '  watershed '  was. 
What  is  it?" 

Roger:  "  I  suppose  it  means  the  area  in  which  all 
the  waters  flow  to  the  same  receptacle  —  a  sea,  a  lake, 
a  marsh.  We've  just  left  a  river  which  was  flowing 
steadily  to  the  south,  to  some  unknown  end.  We  rode 
up  a  small  rise,  and  now,  see,  the  gathering  streams  are 
all  flowing  northwards.  The  Masai  say  these  brooks 
unite  farther  on  to  form  a  river  which  ends  in  a  lake. 
Think  of  that,  Lucy!  We  shall  discover  a  new  lake! 
It  ought  to  be  called  '  Lake  Lucy.'  .  .  ." 

Lucy  (blushing):  "Oh  no,  indeed,  I  should  feel 
quite  uncomfortable  if  I  were  made  so  prominent.  .  .  . 
But  the  country  seems  to  get  lovelier  and  lovelier.  ..." 


THE  HAPPY  VALLEY  183 

The  new  streams  to  which  Roger  referred  irrigated 
a  broad  and  even  expanse  of  fertile  plain  sloping  gently 
to  the  north,  and  seeming  to  terminate  at  the  base  of 
gigantic  cliffs  or  lofty  mountains  which  surrounded 
this  valley  on  three  sides.  They  could  only  make  out 
dimly  the  forms  of  the  highest  mountains  because  of 
the  dry-season  haze,  but  they  seemed  like  the  craters 
of  volcanoes.  Riding  to  the  top  of  an  isolated  hillock 
Roger  obtained  confirmation  of  the  guides'  story.  The 
valley  ended  in  a  lake  of  respectable  size. 

The  grassy  flats  between  the  converging  rivulets 
swarmed  with  big  game  which  showed  comparatively 
little  fear  of  man  and  might  be  seen  grazing  with  herds 
of  the  natives'  cattle.  A  succession  of  exclamations, 
half  wonderment,  half  fear,  came  from  Lucy. 

"Oh!  ...  I  ...  say!  ...  I  thought  those  were 
great  tree  trunks  till  they  moved,  but  .  .  .  they're  .  .  ." 

"They're  giraffes,  by  Jove!  I  wonder  whether  I 
ought  to  bring  one  down  ?  Better  not  .  .  .  might  de- 
lay us  ...  and  I  don't  know  how  the  natives  'ud  take 
it.  .  .  ." 

A  herd  of  six  or  seven  stately  giraffes  suspended 
their  browsing  on  the  upper  branches  of  an  acacia  tree, 
and  gazed  at  them  with  their  liquid  eyes,  flicking  their 
satiny  bodies  with  tails  that  terminated  in  large  black 
tassels. 

"  O-oh !  "  came  from  Lucy,  as  she  reined  in  her  don- 
key. "  Look  at  those  things  over  there!  Like  houses 
or  great  rocks,  but  they're  moving  too !  " 

She  pointed  with  her  riding  whip  to  some  grey  bulks 
in  the  middle  distance  which,  as  they  swished  through 
the  herbage,  showed  here  and  there  a  gleam  of  polished 
tusks. 

"  Shoot!  Master,  shoot!  "  exclaimed  the  Wanyam- 
wezi.  .  .  .  "Elephants,  Master!"  But  Roger  called 
for  silence  and  held  his  hand.  Supposing  the  elephants 
charged  down  on  Lucy?  And  then  he  did  not  know 


1 84      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

how  the  sounds  of  guns  would  be  received  in  this  new 
country,  what  the  unknown  natives  might  think,  and 
lastly,  perhaps  there  was  beginning  to  dawn  on  him  an 
appreciation  of  what  this  spectacle  meant:  a  piece  of 
absolutely  unspoiled  Africa,  not  yet  ravaged  by  the 
white  man  or  the  native  hunter,  armed  with  the  white 
man's  weapons.  His  caravan  had  plenty  of  dried  meat. 
They  should  not  break  the  charm  of  the  Happy  Valley 
-  the  phrase  came  suddenly  into  his  mind,  some  dim 
remembrance  of  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson's  ponderous  ro- 
mance. 

As  they  advanced  northwards  the  scenes  grew  more 
idyllic.  Herds  of  gnus,  hartebeests,  elands,  and  zebras, 
intermingled  with  reed  buck  and  impala,  alternately 
stared  in  immobility,  then  dashed  off  in  clouds  of  yel- 
low dust,  and  once  more  stood  at  gaze.  Gazelles  with 
glossy  black,  annulated  horns  and  bodies  brilliant  in 
colour  —  golden-red,  black-banded,  and  snowy-white 
below  —  cropped  the  turf  a  few  yards  from  the  faintly 
marked  track  which  the  caravan  was  following;  and 
though  the  bucks  lifted  their  heads  to  observe  this  ad- 
vancing file  of  human  beings  they  scarcely  moved  away 
more  than  a  few  yards. 

The  Valley  was  not  entirely  given  up  to  wild  life, 
though  it  seemed  likely  that  it  was  only  used  by  man 
as  a  pasture  ground,  and  that  he  preferred  the  higher 
country,  the  hillocks  on  either  side  of  the  plain,  for  his 
habitations,  out  of  the  way  of  floods  and  swamps.  But 
large  herds  of  cattle  browsed  among  antelopes  and 
zebra  and  were  watched  over  by  herdsmen  who  dis- 
played singularly  little  curiosity  over  this  first  invasion 
of  the  Happy  Valley  by  the  white  man.  The  Stotts 
who  had  preceded  Roger  and  Lucy  seemed  to  have  sat- 
isfied their  curiosity,  once  and  for  all.  These  cattle- 
tenders  were  different  in  physical  type  to  the  ordinary 
Bantu  Negro.  They  were  tall ;  gracefully,  slenderly 
built;  and  reminded  Brentham  of-Somalis,  though  their 


THE  HAPPY  VALLEY  185 

head-hair  was  close-cropped.  Such  women  as  were 
met  showed  no  sign  of  fear.  They  were  clad  in  ample 
garments  of  dressed  leather.  But  the  men  had  all  the 
gallant  nakedness  of  the  Masai  —  a  skin  cape  over  the 
shoulders,  otherwise  only  ivory  arm-rings  and  metal- 
chain  necklaces. 

The  Masai  guides  occasionally  plucked  handfuls  of 
grass  and  exhibited  them  to  the  groups  of  herdsmen  as 
a  testimony  to  the  peaceful  intentions  of  the  white 
man's  caravan.  This  voucher  was  further  confirmed 
by  the  returning  band  of  Masai  who  had  escorted  the 
Stotts  to  this  Arcadia  and  were  now  returning  to  north- 
ern Nguru.  They  exchanged  musical  salutations  with 
Roger's  guides  and  told  them  the  "  Sitoto "  were 
camped  in  a  village  one  day's  further  journey  to  the 
north,  near  the  shores  of  the  lake. 

"  That's  all  right,"  said  Roger,  his  mind  greatly 
relieved.  "  Then  let's  give  our  safari  a  half-holiday 
and  take  things  easy.  We'll  pitch  our  camp  on  that 
knoll.  How  delightful  is  this  short  green  turf  after 
the  miles  and  miles  of  burnt  grass  we've  passed 
through.  The  spring  has  begun  here  a  month  earlier 
than  in  the  lower-lying  country.  I  expect  the  high 
mountains  to  the  north  have  attracted  the  rains,  though 
it's  only  October.  Have  you  noticed,  also,  since  we 
entered  this  valley  we've  had  no  mosquitoes?  I  won- 
der why?  Something  p'raps  they  don't  like  in  the 
water,  or  not  enough  long  grass?  .  .  ." 

As  soon  as  the  camp  was  finished,  the  pastoral  people 
brought  them  rich,  sweet  milk  for  sale,  in  tightly-woven 
grass  receptacles,  in  calabashes,  or  clay  pots.  Some- 
times this  milk  had  a  smoky  taste  from  the  rough  meth- 
ods by  which  the  milk  pots  were  cleansed.  But  it  was 
as  sweet  as  a  nut  and  seemed  to  Lucy,  who  had  long 
been  deprived  of  milk,  except  doled  out  in  small  quanti- 
ties for  tea,  incomparably  delicious  as  a  thirst-quencher. 
And  these  Egyptian-like  people  —  so  often  showing  a 


1 86      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

Pharaonic  profile  and  speaking  a  language  which  Roger 
afterwards  declared  not  very  far  removed  from  Gala 
-  also  traded  in  honey,  honey  flavoured  with  the  scent 
of  the  acacia  blossoms,  appearing  now  as  golden  fluff 
on  the  awakening  trees. 

The  next  day,  the  seventh  since  they  left  Burungi, 
Brentham's  caravan  came  into  full  view  of  the  lake,  its 
shores  lined  with  dense  ranks  of  pinkish-white  flamin- 
goes. To  the  south-east  was  a  native  village  of  long, 
continuous  "  tembe  "  houses,  arranged  more  or  less  -in 
parallelograms,  or  hollow  squares,  enclosing  for  ea'ch 
family  or  group  a  turfy  space  where  the  cattle  passed 
the  night  and  family  life  was  carried  on  in  the  open 
air  and  in  security. 

One  of  these  enclosures  had  evidently  been  given 
over  to  the  Stotts  for  a.  temporary  home.  And  from 
out  of  it  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Stott  might  be  descried,  hurry- 
ing to  meet  the  caravan.  Before  they  could  arrive, 
Roger  halted  his  men  and  surveyed  the  whole  scene  be- 
fore him  from  a  grassy  mound  where  he  thought  to 
pitch  his  camp.  Projecting  mountain  buttresses  shut 
in  the  valley  and  the  lake,  west,  north  and  east.  West 
and  north  these  mountains  almost  overhung  the  flat 
lake  shores  in  an  abrupt  escarpment,  blue,  without  de- 
tails, in  the  afternoon  shadow.  To  the  east  of  the  lake, 
though  there  were  great  heights  and  in  the  north-east 
a  hint  of  giant  summits  capped  with  snow,  the  rise  was 
not  so  abrupt,  more  broken,  and  the  rocks  more  arid, 
but  vivid  and  variegated  in  colour  —  red,  yellow, 
greenish  grey,  purple  black  and  creamy  white.  The 
mountains  on  the  west  were  diversified  with  combes 
and  glens,  were  carved,  moulded,  seamed  with  water- 
courses; embroidered  and  mantled  with  dark  green 
forests.  Where  the  lake  was  deep  its  waters  were  a 
pure  cobalt,  but  its  shallows  were  whitish-green  with 
salt  or  soda,  and  the  level  shores  from  which  the  waters 
had  retreated  were  greyish  white,  probably  with  the 


THE  HAPPY  VALLEY  187 

guano  of  the  countless  flamingoes,  who  had  their  nest- 
ing-stools some  distance  back  from  the  water's  edge. 
Herds  of  cattle  browsed  peacefully  on  the  green  water- 
meadows  of  the  river-delta;  nearer  at  hand  flocks  of 
black  and  white  sheep  mingled  with  half-shy  gazelles 
of  golden  brown.  Great  Secretary  birds  —  grey, 
black,  and  white  —  stalked  through  the  herbage  look- 
ing for  snakes  and  lizards,  knowing  no  fear  of  man  in 
their  honourable  calling.  Blue  whorls  of  smoke  arose 
from  the  fishermen's  fires  on  the  lake  shore,  where  fish 
was  being  smoked  on  wooden  frames.  All  this  was 
irradiated  by  the  yellow  light  of  the  westering  sun. 
Before,  the  Stotts  could  reach  them  and  break  their  si- 
lence of  contentment,  Roger  turned  to  Lucy  and  said : 
"  This  is  the  Happy  Valley!  " 

The  Stotts  were  of  course  full  of  questions  and 
wonderment.  Mr.  Stott  was  a  middle-aged  man  of 
strong  build,  honest  hazel  eyes,  clipped  beard,  tanned 
face  and  generally  pleasing  appearance.  He  had  never 
before  met  either  Lucy  or  Brentham,  so  Mrs.  Stott  had 
to  make  the  introductions. 

After  these  surprised  and  joyous  greetings,  an  ad- 
journment took  place  to  the  Stotts'  quarters.  Al- 
though they  had  only  been  about  a  week  established 
here,  in  a  portion  of  the  village  of  Mwada  lent  them 
by  the  native  chief,  the  practical  and  never  defeated 
Stotts  —  the  born  colonists,  the  realized  Swiss  Family 
Robinson  —  had  already  made  themselves  a  new  home 
in  the  wilderness.  They  had  swept  out  and  cleaned 
the  "  tembes,"  the  continuous  huts  of  wattle  and  daub, 
divided  into  many  compartments,  which  enclosed  the 
turfy  square;  and  in  the  centre  of  their  "  compound  " 
had  erected  a  circular  building  of  stout  palm  poles  and 
grass  that  covered  a  swept  space  of  ground.  In  the 
middle  of  this  they  had  fashioned  a  table  of  reed-bun- 
dles fastened  to  upright  posts  and  had  manufactured 
rough  forms  and  stools  of  hyphaene  palm  trunks. 


1 88      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

This  was  their  "  baraza  "  or  reception-room,  their  eat- 
ing-house, and  shaded  playground  for  their  hardy  chil- 
dren. Within  the  enclosed  ground  they  kept  their 
milch  goats,  sheep,  and  riding  donkeys.  Of  these  they 
had  quite  a  troop,  purchased  from  the  Masai.  These 
asses  had  proved  most  useful  as  beasts  of  burden  for 
the  transport  of  their  loads,  so  that  they  almost  man- 
aged without  human  porterage.  Mr.  Stott  had  con- 
structed very  practical  pack  saddles. 

"  Come  along  to  our  baraza,"  said  genial  Mrs.  Stott. 
"  Let  us  try  and  make  you  up  some  kind  of  a  meal 
before  we  begin  talking." 

Roger  gave  a  few  directions  about  his  own  camping, 
a  quarter  of  a  mile  distant,  and  then  joined  Lucy  and 
the  Stotts,  who  were  walking  to  "  our  new  mission 
station,"  as  Mrs.  Stott  called  it. 

"  You  know  we  are  never  down-hearted ;  we  know 
God  orders  everything  for  the  best!  I  am  sure  He 
thought  we  were  settling  down  too  comfortably  among 
the  Wagogo,  and  so  gave  us  a  hint  to  press  farther  into 
the  interior.  Of  course,  when  things  quiet  down :  for 
either  the  Germans  or  the  English  must  conquer  East 
Africa:  it  would  be  sickening  to  leave  the  Arabs  and 
Ruga-ruga  in  control  —  we  shall  build  up  again  our 
Burungi  station  and  put  capable  people  in  charge  of  it, 
people  who'll  get  on  well  with  the  Wagogo.  .  .  .  They 
want  a  bit  of  managing.  You  see  how  well  it  would 
suit  as  a  halt  on  the  way  to  this  wonderful  country  - 
What  do  you  call  it  ?  '  The  Happy  Valley  '  ?  Yes, 
tliat  shall  be  its  name.  How  the  Lord's  ways  are  past 
finding  out !  I  felt  so  sick  at  heart  when  we  were  leav- 
ing Burungi.  .  .  .  I'll  tell  you  how  it  all  happened. 
Our  Masai  friends  had  beaten  off  the  Ruga-ruga,  but 
the  Wagogo  thought  they  intended  to  return,  probably 
with  real  Arabs  in  command.  My  husband  is  obliged 
to  shoot  game;  otherwise  we  couldn't  live,  much  less 
feed  our  people.  They  raided  us  chiefly  for  arms  and 


1 89 

ammunition.  .  .  .  We  beat  them  off,  but  the  Wagogo 
thought  they  would  be  sure  to  return  —  much  stronger 
next  time.  So  after  thinking  it  over  and  putting  our 
case  before  God  in  prayer  we  decided  that  night  after 
the  attack  ceased,  to  spend  the  hours  of  darkness  pack- 
ing. The  next  morning  we  bought  ten  more  donkeys 
from  the  Masai,  besides  the  ten  we  had  already,  loaded 
them  up  and  then  said  to  our  Masai  friends  —  my 
husband  speaks  Masai  pretty  well :  '  Now,  can  you 
guide  us  to  some  country  where  we  can  be  safe  from 
the  Lajomba  —  their  name  for  the  Arabs  —  for  a 
time?'  And  they  led  us  here  ...  let  us  say,  rather, 
they  were  God's  agents  in  leading  us  here.  Isn't  this 
a  wonderful  country?  We  have  never  seen  the  like. 
Somehow  we  feel  so  safe  here.  You  can't  think  of  any 
enemy  coming  over  those  high  mountains  —  one  of 
them  has  snow  on  the  summit  —  or  over  the  cliffs. 
They  can  only  come  up  the  river  valley.  And  to  do 
that  they  must  fight  their  way  through  the  Rangi  and 
Fiome  peoples.  The  Rangi  people  speak  a  language 
like  Chi-gogo,  and  so  —  oddly  enough  —  do  the  fisher 
folk  round  this  extraordinary  lake.  But  the  others 
don't  look  like  ordinary  Negroes.  They  are  more  like 
Somalis.  And  I  can't  make  anything  out  of  their  lan- 
guage. But  although  they're  different  to  the  Masai 
they  seem  to  have  some  kind  of  alliance  with  them,  and 
they  received  us  here  as  friends,  because  the  Masai 
brought  us.  What  a  field  for  the  Lord's  work!  And 
to  think  I  almost  doubted  God  when  He  let  the  Ruga- 
ruga  attack  Burungi !  .  .  . 

"  But  here  we  are,  at  our  temporary  home,  and  I 
must  go  to  the  cook-house  and  see  about  your  meal. 
You  won't  mind  native  stuff,  will  you  ?  You  see  we've 
lost  most  of  our  tinned  provisions,  and  indeed  we  had 
been  living  on  the  country  long  before  the  Ruga-ruga 
attacked  us.  Like  all  the  other  missionaries  of  late 
we've  had  very  few  caravans  from  the  coast." 


190      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

Mr.  Stott  led  the  way  to  the  "  baraza "  with  its 
rough  table  of  reed-bundles  on  a  framework  of  sticks 
and  its  palm  trunks  to  sit  on. 

The  Stott  children  were  playing  on  the  dusty  turf  of 
the  cleared  ground  in  front  of  the  baraza. 

"  I'm  afraid  you'll  think  our  little  'uns  rather  un- 
cared  for,"  said  Mr.  Stott  apologetically;  "but  my 
poor  wife's  had  too  much  to  do  in  our  hurried  flight 
and  after  we  got  here  to  spend  much  time  on  their 
clothing  or  even  getting  them  clean!  "  The  eldest  of 
the  three  was  a  pretty  boy  with  light  flaxen  hair  and 
blue  eyes,  very  tanned  of  skin,  very  grubby  of  face  and 
hands.  He  wore  a  tattered  smock  and  short  breeches, 
vestiges  of  a  "  sailor  suit."  On  his  feet  were  cleverly 
made  native  sandals,  as  on  those  of  his  younger  brother 
and  little  sister,  whose  legs  and  feet  were  otherwise 
naked,  and  the  two  smaller  children  had  little  on  but  a 
yard  or  two  of  calico  wound  round  the  waist.  Lucy 
recognized  in  the  youngest  the  solemn  baby  she  had 
seen  at  Unguja  playing  with  the  large  cockroaches; 
and  said  so. 

"Yes,"  replied  Mr.  Stott.  "Afraid  of  nothing, 
poor  little  mite.  When  the  Ruga-ruga  came  I  hur- 
riedly built  up  a  sort  of  zariba  of  boxes  and  stones, 
and  put  a  tarpaulin  over  it  and  told  the  little  'uns  to 
keep  quiet;  and  there  they  were,  all  through  the  right- 
ing. Mother  and  I  would  go  and  give  'em  food  every 
now  and  again,  and  Edgar  here  " —  pointing  to  the 
boy  — "  'ud  say,  '  How's  the  fight  going,  Daddy  ?  ' 
And  Edgar's  bin  a  rare  good  boy  since  we  came  here, 
helping  to  tie  these  bundles  of  reeds  and  making  him- 
self useful.  Our  eldest's  at  home  in  Ireland  with  her 
grandmother  —  for  her  education.  The  next  one  we 
buried  years  ago  in  the  Nguru  country,  and  the  very 
youngest  —  bless  her  —  died  of  infantile  diarrhoea  last 
March  at  Burungi.  That  accounts  for  the  six  of  'em; 
and  I'll  lay  there  aren't  many  British  children  have 


THE  HAPPY  VALLEY  191 

had  such  an  adventurous  bringing-up,  'cept  the  young 
Livingstones  and  Moffats." 

Mrs.  Stott  was  now  spreading  a  wrinkled,  grey- 
white  cloth  over  the  reed  table-top.  And  the  children 
were  up  on  their  feet  helping  her  and  a  native  servant 
bring  the  meal  from  the  cook-house  to  the  baraza. 

"  We're  giving  you  just  the  native  ugali  —  porridge, 
you  know,"  said  Mrs.  Stott,  "  but  there's  a  lovely  pot 
of  fresh  milk  from  the  natives'  cattle.  Here's  some 
honey  in  a  calabash.  Here  are  the  rest  of  the  scones 
we  had  for  breakfast.  I've  made  you  some  tea  — 
rather  weak,  but  it  is  so  precious.  And  whilst  you're 
tackling  that  I'm  going  to  fry  some  fish  we  got  from 
the  lake  this  morning  —  bony,  but  very  sweet.'' 

During  their  meal  Roger  and  Lucy  tried  to  give  in 
instalments  a  description  of  the  extraordinary  circum- 
stances which  had  brought  them  here  in  company. 
Mrs.  Stott,  who  had  fetched  her  sewing  so  that  she 
might  not  be  wasting  time  (Mr.  Stott  had  excused  him- 
self, having  urgent  work  to  do  till  the  evening),  looked 
a  little  puzzled  and  not  quite  acquiescent  over  Bren- 
tham's  explanations. 

"  Here,  children !  You  go  now  and  help  Brahimu 
and  Kagavezi.  Don't  get  into  mischief.  Keep  out  of 
the  sun,  don't  pick  up  scorpions,  and  don't  go  outside 
the  boma.  .  .  .  I'm  an  outspoken  woman,  you  know, 
Lucy.  I  can't  help  saying  I  think  you  ought  to  have 
stuck  by  your  husband." 

"  But  I  was  so  ill,  Mrs.  Stott,  and  John  insisted  on 
my  going.  Didn't  he  ...  Captain  Brentham?" 

"  He  did  really,  Mrs.  Stott.  I  had  instructions  to 
advise  all  the  missionaries  to  leave  their  stations  and 
return  to  the  coast  —  indeed,  I  come  here  to  you  with 
that  message,  but  I  suppose  you  won't  obey  it  ?  " 

"  Indeed  I  won't,  Captain  Brentham,  though  I  thank 
you  for  your  efforts  to  find  us  and  help  us.  I  do  in- 
deed. But  wherever  my  husband  is,  there  will  I  be  too, 


192      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

unless  he  absolutely  ordered  me  to  go  away.  .  .  .  And 
I  saw  it  was  the  will  of  God  that  I  should  go." 

"  Well :  that  was  what  John  did  to  me  —  absolutely 
ordered  me  to  go,"  said  Lucy,  beginning  to  cry.  "  He 
ordered  Ann  to  go  with  me.  It  isn't  my  fault  —  our 
fault  —  that  Ann  has  gone  back,  in  spite  of  John's 
positive  commands.  Ann  never  obeys  any  one.  Oh 
dear,  oh  dear!  what  should  I  do  ...  I  feel  if  I  go 
back  to  that  place  I  shall  simply  die  ...  and  yet  I 
shall  lose  your  good  opinion  .  .  .  if  I  go  to  the  coast 
with  Captain  Brentham.  .  .  ." 

"  Oh,  I  don't  say  that.  I'm  not  one  for  passing 
judgments  on  my  fellow  creatures.  It's  between  them 
and  God.  But  look  here,  Captain  Brentham :  I  don't 
want  to  keep  you  idle.  I'll  be  bound  there's  a  hundred 
things  you  want  to  see  to  in  your  camp.  I'll  keep  Lucy 
with  me.  She  and  I  are  old  friends,  as  you  know.  1  f 
you'd  send  over  her  loads  and  her  native  woman  — 
let's  see,  what  was  her  name?  I  remember  how  she 
nursed  you  when  your  poor  baby  came  —  and  went  — 
Halima?  Yes.  Well,  send  over  everything  that  be- 
longs to  Lucy  and  her  tent  shall  be  pitched  inside  our 
boma  whilst  she  stays  here.  She  and  I  will  talk  things 
over  a  bit  and  then,  maybe,  we'll  call  you  into  consulta- 
tion. I'm  sure  you  want  to  do  what's  best  for  us  all. 
What  a  strange  place  to  meet  in!  The  last  time  we 
spoke  together  was  in  your  grand  Arab  house  at  Un- 
guja  and  I  was  more  than  a  bit  afraid  of  you." 

Mrs.  Stott  rose  up  from  her  sewing,  walked  with 
Brentham  to  the  exit  from  the  compound,  and  gazed 
across  the  outer  greensward  to  the  very  blue  lake,  with 
its  whitish  rim  of  scum  or  salt.  In  the  distance  the 
blush-tint  flamingoes  flew  with  wings  of  black  and 
scarlet  in  V  formations,  against  an  azure  background 
of  colossal  mountains  rising  tier  above  tier;  or,  their 
glistening  plumage  showed  up  more  effectively  against 
the  violet  shadows  of  the  western  cliffs  and  wooded 


THE  HAPPY  VALLEY  193 

gorges  bordering  the  lake,  and  still  more  strikingly 
when  contrasted  with  the  cobalt  surface  of  the  lake 
itself.  Other  flamingoes  waded  into  the  lake,  filtering 
through  their  laminated  beaks  the  minute  organisms 
evidently  abundant  in  its  water.  Hundreds,  perhaps 
even  thousands,  of  these  birds  stood  in  serried  ranks 
along  the  curving,  diverging  shores.  The  rear  ranks 
were  composed  of  immature  birds  of  dirty-white  plu- 
mage streaked  with  brown ;  but  these  were  masked  by 
the  front  rows  of  adults,  affectedly  conscious  of  their 
beauty  of  plumage  and  outline.  They  exhibited  a  hun- 
dred mannerisms  in  their  poses :  lowered  their  kinky 
necks  to  dabble  in  the  ooze,  or  raised  them  perpendicu- 
larly and  "  honked  "  to  let  the  humans  know  they  were 
on  their  guard  (though  never  a  man  in  these  parts 
thought  of  harming  them).  Or  they  cleaned  their 
backs  with  rosy  coils  of  neck,  stood  on  one  vermilion 
leg  and  bent  the  other  limb  beneath  the  belly  feathers. 
Or  they  fenced  at  each  other  with  decurved  bills  of 
purple  and  red  in  make-believe  petulance,  and  because 
life-conditions  were  so  perfect  that  they  had  nothing 
whatever  to  grumble  at.  ...  Some  Wambugwe  ca- 
noes were  approaching  the  lake  shore  with  fish  to  sell 
to  the  white  men.  A  considerable  section  of  the  fla- 
mingoes rose  into  the  sky  with  a  display  of  roseate 
tints  against  the  blue  .  .  .  then  landed  and  folded  their 
wings  in  assurance  of  safety. 

"  Yes,"  continued  Mrs.  Stott,  "  I  little  thought  we 
should  meet  under  circumstances  like  these.  Aren't 
those  flamingoes  wonderful?  Like  a  revelation  of  God 
—  almost.  I  shall  stay  here  if  only  to  look  after  them. 
They  shall  be  the  roses  in  my  garden.  I  shan't  want 
any  others.  You  see  they're  not  afraid  of  man  and 
they  don't  get  in  man's  way.  They  aren't  good  to 
eat  —  much  too  fishy.  And,  as  far  as  I  can  see,  they 
don't  eat  fish ;  only  mud,  seemingly  —  shrimps, 
p'raps.  .  .  « 


"Well,  Consul:  come  again  at  supper-time;  and  if 
I'm  too  stingy  over  my  precious  tea,  at  any  rate  I'll  give 
you  hot  milk  and  pancakes  and  honey." 

Left  with  Lucy,  Mrs.  Stott  first  took  her  to  the 
washing  hut  and  provided  the  means  for  a  good  bath 
and  next  lent  her  some  garment  of  the  dressing-gown 
order  with  which  to  clothe  herself  till  her  luggage  and 
her  attendant  arrived. 

"  I'll  tell  you  what  I  am  going  to  advise  Captain 
Brentham  to  do,  Lucy,"  said  Mrs.  Stott.  "  Come  what 
may,  you'll  be  none  the  worse  for  a  good  rest  here. 
This  place  is  evidently  far  healthier  than  the  lower 
country.  The  Consul  shall  bargain  with  your  Masai 
guides  to  go  as  fast  as  they  can  back  to  Ulunga  and 
find  out  what  has  happened  at  Hangodi.  If  things  are 
still  quiet  there,  the  probability  is  they  are  going  to 
remain  quiet.  In  that  case  —  if  your  husband  does  not 
absolutely  forbid  it,  Captain  Brentham  ought  to  take 
you  back  to  Hangodi  and  leave  you  there.  He  can 
then  find  his  own  way  somehow  to  the  place  he  lives  at 
—  Medina.  If  the  messengers  come  back  with  bad 
news  about  the  Arabs,  or  if  John  Baines  positively  ve- 
toes your  returning,  tlicn  all  you  can  do  is  to  put  your- 
self under  the  Consul's  care  and  travel  with  him  to 
Mvita  .  .  .  unless  you  like  to  stop  with  me  and  live  on 
country  produce.  I  think  we  can  —  whilst  you're 
waiting  here  —  get  in  touch  with  the  Masai  beyond  the 
mountains  and  by  giving  them  a  present  induce  them 
to  guide  you  to  the  Kilimanjaro  country,  to  one  of  the 
mission  stations  there  —  Evangelical  or  Methodist, 
don't  matter  which.  After  that  all  would  be  plain  sail- 
ing, for  I  don't  believe  the  Arabs  of  the  British  sphere 
are  going  to  rise." 

When  in  the  evening  of  that  day,  by  the  light  of  a 
camp  fire  —  they  had  practically  no  artificial  light  — 
Mrs.  Stott  put  this  plan  before  Roger,  he  promptly 
agreed.  It  would  show  he  had  done  the  right  thing. 


THE  HAPPY  VALLEY  195 

It  would  go  far  to  save  Lucy's  good  name,  especially 
among  Mission  folk.  And  it  would  give  him  nearly  a 
month  to  stay  and  explore  the  Happy  Valley.  He 
had  spent  much  of  the  day  with  James  Stott  helping 
him  in  his  work  on  the  embryo  station,  and  Stott  had 
told  him  of  wonderful  things  he  had  seen  or  had 
gleaned  from  native  information.  There  was  the  new 
lake  to  survey  roughly;  there  was  a  paradise  of  big 
game  to  shoot  in.  Here  Mrs.  Stott  intervened :  "  I 
hope  you  and  my  husband  will  go  slow  as  regards 
shooting.  I  know  we  must  have  the  meat  and  we're 
so  nearly  bankrupt  at  the  coast  that  a  few  tusks  of 
ivory  would  come  in  handy.  But  somehow  I  should 
like  to  think  of  this  Happy  Valley  as  a  sort  of  pre- 
served zoological  gardens  where  all  these  innocent  crea- 
tures of  God's  handiwork " 

"  I  shouldn't  call  a  rhinoceros  innocent,  Mrs.  Stott," 
said  Roger,  smoking  his  pipe  with  such  contentment  as 
he  had  not  known  for  months  — "  I  have  rather  a  ten- 
der conscience  about  antelopes  and  zebras,  but  rhinos 
attack  you  absolutely  unprovoked.  ..." 

Mrs.  Stott:  "  Only  because  men  began  humbug- 
ging them  first  of  all,  long  ago,  I  expect.  However, 
if  ever  I  lived  to  see  our  mission  stations  self-support- 
ing and  growing  all  the  food  they  needed,  I'd  never 
let  James  fire  another  shot  at  the  game." 

The  next  morning  the  two  Masai  guides,  well  re- 
warded, started  off  with  a  package.  It  contained  let- 
ters home  from  the  Stotts,  telling  of  their  wonderful 
deliverance;  a  brief  despatch  from  Captain  Brentham 
to  H.M.  Agent  at  Unguja,  and  letters  to  John  Baines 
and  Ann  Jamblin.  John  was  asked  how  things  were 
going,  and  whether  on  second  thoughts  he  would  prefer 
Lucy  to  return  to  Hnngodi,  and  if  he  could  take  the 
next  opportunity  of  having  the  accompanying  letters 
sent  to  the  coast ;  and  Ann  was  given  —  curtly  —  in- 
formation as  to  Lucy's  reaching  the  temporary  station 


196      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

of  the  Stotts.  However  expansive  the  Stotts  might 
be,  within  the  compass  of  one  sheet  of  paper,  they  said 
very  little  about  the  situation  of  the  Happy  Valley; 
and  Brentham  was  still  more  reticent.  Both  no  doubt 
for  the  same  reason,  that  the  Happy  Valley  was  too 
good  a  proposition  to  be  given  away  lightly  to  a  greedy 
world.  Mrs.  Stott  still  hoped,  despite  concluded  boun- 
dary conventions,  it  might  be  brought  within  the  Brit- 
ish sphere ;  Brentham  did  not  want  any  other  fellow  to 
have  a  go  at  its  big  game  or  an  examination  of  its 
alluring  secrets  till  he  had  had  a  chance  to  return. 

Whilst  these  letters  were  being  carried  to  their  desti- 
nation by  two  lithe,  naked  men  of  red-brown  skin,  with 
hair  done  up  in  periwigs  of  twine  soaped  with  mutton 
fat  and  the  same  red-ochre  as  coloured  their  sleek 
bodies,  men  who  carried  knobkerries  in  their  waist- 
cords  and  long-bladed  spears  in  the  right  hand,  great 
oval  shields  on  the  left  arm,  and  who  ran  on  sandalled 
feet  a  steady  six  miles  an  hour  when  they  were  on  the 
road :  Lucy  and  Roger  disposed  themselves  to  await 
patiently  the  news  which  —  they  felt  —  was  to  deter- 
mine their  fate. 

Twenty  days  went  by  in  the  Happy  Valley  in  bliss- 
ful sameness.  Lucy  had  her  very  limited  wardrobe 
washed  in  the  lake  waters  which  had  some  oddly  cleans- 
ing, blanching  effect  —  something  chemical  which  both 
Roger  and  Mr.  Stott  would  discuss  in  muttered  phrases. 
Lucy  and  Mrs.  Stott  together,  with  many  a  laugh  at 
blunder  or  foiled  hopes  of  success,  at  length  succeeded 
in  ironing  the  skirts  and  bodices  and  petticoats  and 
linen  with  a  parody  of  a  flat-iron,  made  for  them  by  a 
naked  Elkonono  blacksmith  in  a  native  forge. 

Brentham  and  his  Wanyamwezi  porters  helped  Mr. 
Stott  complete  his  new  station.  Or  they  organized 
great  shooting  parties  which  enriched  Mr.  Stott  with 
ivory  that  he  might  some  day  sell,  as  against  trade 
goods  and  tea; or  they  accumulated  biltong  for  Roger's 


THE  HAPPY  VALLEY  197 

expedition,  besides  finding  meat  for  the  day-by-day 
food  of  these  hungry  Wanyamwezi.  To  meet  Mrs. 
Stott's  scruples  and  objections  they  had  themselves 
paddled  in  Wambugwe  canoes  farther  up  the  lake  and 
shot  elephants,  zebras,  buffaloes,  antelopes,  on  the  flats 
twenty  miles  to  the  north  of  the  Stotts'  station.  Or 
they  rode  donkeys  and  travelled  twenty  miles  south- 
wards, back  along  the  road  they  had  come  (and  got 
faint,  far-off  rumours  of  men  righting,  leagues  and 
leagues  away,  which  made  them  anxious). 

Or  they  laid  out  plantations  in  the  rich  alluvial  soil 
behind  the  station  and  fenced  them  in.  There  Mr. 
Stott  could  plant  his  poor  remnant  of  English  vegetable 
seeds,  or  with  greater  hope  the  maize,  pumpkins,  sweet 
potatoes,  ground-nuts,  beans,  and  manioc  of  the  agri- 
cultural and  fishing  Bantu  population. 

Then,  on  the  twenty-first  day  of  this  busy  three 
weeks,  the  Masai  messengers  once  more  squatted  before 
the  Stotts'  baraza.  Silently  one  of  them  tendered  to 
Mrs.  Stott  a  little  package  of  dried  banana  leaves,  tied 
with  some  native  fibre.  Inside  a  fold  of  old  newspaper 
and  a  makeshift  envelope  made  out  of  a  copy-book 
cover,  on  one  half -sheet  of  dirty  copy-book  paper,  Ann 
sent  Lucy  this  message : 

Mbogo's  Village, 

NOVEMBER  SOMETHING  OR  OTHER,  1888. 
DEAR  LUCY, — 

Your  messengers  arrived  yesterday,  but  I  had  to 
keep  them  waiting  for  an  answer  and  now  they  are 
impatient  to  go.  The  station  has  been  attacked  —  I 
think  it  began  at  the  end  of  October,  but  I  am  muddled 
about  dates.  John  and  Mr.  Bayley  were  killed  on  the 
second  day.  Anderson  and  I  are  only  wounded ;  we 
are  recovering,  though  my  headaches  are  awful. 
Josiah  is  dead,  tell  Halima.  Help  has  come  at  last. 
But  don't  come  back  this  way.  The  Ruga-ruga  are  all 


i98      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

over  Ugogo  and  there  is  fierce  fighting  in  Nguru.  The 
Masai  fought  splendidly  on  our  side.  Go  on  to  the 
coast  quick  as  you  can,  northern  route.  Can't  write 
more  now,  but  will  send  through  more  news  to  Unguja 
if  I  get  the  chance.  Good-bye.  John  talked  of  noth- 
ing but  you  when  he  was  dying.  It's  about  broken  my 
heart. 

ANN  JAMBLIN. 

Lucy  and  Mrs.  Stott  looked  at  one  another  in  horror 
and  consternation  as  this  note  —  written  by  a  pencil 
that  had  been  frequently  moistened  —  fluttered  to  the 
ground  from  Lucy's  nerveless  fingers.  She  felt  it  was 
the  only  tribute  to  her  husband's  memory,  to  her  real 
horror  and  remorse  to  assume  a  faintness  she  did  not 
feel  while  Mrs.  Stott  led  her  dry-eyed  to  her  tent  and 
couch. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE   ATTACK    ON    THE    STATION 

From    Mrs.   Anderson,   E.A.M.,    to   Mr.    Callaway, 
Agent  of  East  African  Mission,  Unguja. 

Mbogo's  Village, 
Ulunga,  Nguru, 

Novr.  30,  1888. 

DEAR  MR.  CALLAWAY, — 
You  may  have  heard  some  rumour  of  what 
has  happened  to  us  here.     You  will  find  much  of  it 
described  in  the  letter  I  have  written  to  Mr.   John 
Baines's  mother.     You  can  read  this  letter.     Read  it 
and  then  take  notes.     You  have   several  clerks  and 
none  of  them  with  a  broken  head  like  mine,  I'll  be 
bound,  and  plenty  of  good  pens,  ink  and  stationery. 
All  I've  got  to  write  on  is  some  old  ruled  exercise 
books  and  no  envelopes.     Well,  make  up  some  sort 
of  a  letter  out  of  what  I've  written  to  Mrs.  Baines 
senior,  and  then  send  it  to  the  headquarters  of  the  Mis- 
sion in  London ;  and  post  the  letter  to  her,  Mrs.  Baines, 
Tilehurst,   Reading.     Tell   them   I'm   recovering  and 
I'm  going  to  stay  here  till  I  am  relieved  and  even  per- 
haps afterwards,  supposing  I  and  my  husband  get  quite 
well.     You  may  be  surprised  at  my  change  of  surname, 
having  known  me  as  Miss  Jamblin.     Just  before  the 
attack   on   our   station    (Hangodi)    occurred    I    went 
through  a  religious  form  of  marriage  with  Mr.  Ebe- 
nezer  Anderson.     Mrs.  John  Baines  had  gone  away  — 
her  husband  sent  her  off  to  the  coast  in  the  charge  of 
Consul  Brentham  —  and  I  did  not  think  it  right  to  stay 
at  the  Mission  with  three  men  and  me  unmarried ;  so  I 

199 


200      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

accepted  Mr.  Anderson's  proposal.  Mr.  Baines  mar- 
ried us,  but  as  I  supposed  it  wouldn't  be  legal  without 
we  were  married  again  before  the  Consul  at  Unguja, 
we  haven't  lived  together  as  man  and  wife,  and  won't 
till  everything  can  be  made  right  and  proper.  I  only 
mention  this  in  case  either  of  us  died. 

You  can  also  tell  the  big  man  at  Unguja  —  Sir  God- 
frey Something  —  what  has  happened  in  case  he  cares 
to  know.  I  don't  suppose  he  does  care.  Those  big 
pots  always  sneer  at  Nonconformist  Missionaries. 
But  I  want  him  to  know  this.  We  should  have  all 
been  killed  and  perhaps  tortured  and  our  station  might 
have  been  utterly  destroyed  and  our  people  carried  off 
into  slavery  if  it  hadn't  been  first  for  the  Masai,  and 
most  of  all  for  an  old  Arab,  Ali  bin  Ferhan  —  I  think 
he  spells  his  name.  He's  written  it  in  Arabic  on  the 
piece  of  paper  I  enclose.  He  lives  at  Momoro,  near 
the  Lingani  River.  Well,  for  reasons  too  long  to  give 
he  no  sooner  heard  we  were  going  to  be  attacked  by  the 
Ruga-ruga  and  the  black  Arabs  (they  were  led  by  that 
limb  of  the  Devil,  Ayub  bin  Majidi,  whom  they  nick- 
name Mnazi-moja)  than  he  came  to  our  assistance. 
Mbogo  and  his  people  deserve  a  gold  medal  —  not  that 
any  one  will  give  it  —  they're  only  "  Wa-shenzi ''  and 
we're  only  Nonconformists;  they  fought  splendidly; 
but  they  were  just  giving  way  when  this  old  Arab  — 
just  like  a  picture  of  Abraham  he  is  —  came  up  with 
a  lot  of  his  people  armed  with  guns  and  carrying  flags. 
And  he  called  off  the  fighting.  After  that  the  Ruga- 
ruga  and  their  leaders  simply  disappeared  with  all  the 
plunder  they  could  carry  and  we  have  been  at  peace 
ever  since,  with  Ali  bin  Ferhani  camped  here  and  keep- 
ing guard  over  Ulunga.  Ali  doesn't  like  the  Germans. 
He  always  wanted  his  beloved  "  Ekkels  " —  I  suppose 
he  means  Sir  James  Eccles  —  to  take  the  country  for 
the  English  Queen.  But  he  thinks  bad  will  come  if  any 
white  people  are  killed.  He  is  so  afraid  the  Germans 


THE  ATTACK  ON  THE  STATION         201 

will  think  he  joined  with  the  other  Arabs  that  I  now 
tell  you  all  this,  though  every  day  I  have  a  splitting 
headache.  I  really  began  this  letter  a  week  ago.  I 
write  a  little  every  day,  and  now  I  think  Ali  will  be 
able  to  get  it  sent  through  to  the  coast,  to  Mvita,  per- 
haps. 

The  other  letter  —  an  exercise  book  tied  up  —  is  for 
Mrs.  John  Baines.  I  don't  think  any  one  ought  to  see 
it  but  herself.  So  please  put  it  into  an  envelope  and 
address  it  to  her  "  To  await  arrival  at  Unguja."  She 
started  off  for  the  Mvita  coast  with  Captain  Brentham 
a  month  ago.  What's  happened  to  her  I  don't  know. 
I  sent  messengers  to  tell  her  her  husband  was  dead. 

I  saw  Mrs.  Stott  here  last  July  when  Mrs.  John 
Baines  had  her  premature  confinement.  Since  then  I 
only  know  that  their  station  at  Burungi  was  destroyed, 
L»ut  they  got  away  safely  somewhere  else,  where  the 
Consul  and  Mrs.  Baines  afterwards  found  them. 
Yours  in  the  love  of  Jesus, 

ANN  ANDERSON. 

P.S.  T  ought  perhaps  to  be  more  business-like,  in 
spite  of  feeling  so  ill,  in  case  there  is  any  trouble  about 
wills  and  say  that  their  names  were  Thomas  Aldrich 
Bayley  and  John  Baines  and  that  they  died  as  near  as  I 
can  reckon  on  October  29th,  1888.  I  haven't  found 
any  wills,  but  I  am  trying  to  get  their  effects  together, 
though  of  course  there  is  great  confusion  after  the 
looting.  I've  also  written  a  note  for  old  Mrs.  Bayley. 

From  Mrs.  Anderson,  E.A.M.,  to  Mrs.  John  Baines, 

c/o  Mr.  Callaway,  Agent,  East  African  Mission, 

Unguja. 

Mbogo's  Village, 
Ulunga, 

November,  1888. 
DEAR  LUCY, — 

I  am  beginning  to  write  this  as  near  as  I  can  guess 


202      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

November  15,  but  I've  got  out  in  my  dates  and  no 
wonder.  I've  also  got  a  broken  head  — - 1  expect  a 
touch  of  concussion  besides  a  scalp  wound  —  and  it  is 
simple  agony  to  write  for  long.  My  eyes  hurt  so.  I 
must  however  try  to  tell  you  —  and  John's  mother  — 
what  has  happened,  so  I  shall  write  a  little  every  day  if 
I  am  fit  to  and  send  these  letters  to  the  coast  by  the 
first  chance.  Ali  bin  Ferhani  thinks  he  can  manage  a 
messenger  later  on  who  would  cross  into  the  British 
"  sphere."  I  expect  you  got  my  first  message  sent  by 
the  Masai?  In  case  you  didn't  or  in  case  something 
happens  to  me  and  I  can't  finish  a  long  letter,  I'll  tell 
you  the  plain  facts  first :  John's  dead,  Bayley's  dead, 
Josiah's  dead.  Anderson  and  I  are  wounded.  I'm 
nearly  well.  The  station  is  only  partially  destroyed. 
Now  you  know  the  worst. 

When  I  returned  here  from  Burungi  it  was  about  the 
tenth  of  October,  so  far  as  we  could  keep  count.  John 
was  very  angry  with  me  at  first,  for  leaving  you  and 
for  coining  to  live  with  three  men  and  I  a  single  woman. 
I  well-nigh  lost  patience  with  him.  But  I  said,  Well 
if  that's  all  I'll  marry  one  of  you,  I'll  marry  Ebenezer 
if  he'll  have  me.  Ebenezer  Anderson  didn't  look  over- 
joyed, but  John  said :  That's  all  right ;  you  came  out 
to  marry  him,  so  the  Mission  expected,  and  you're  only 
now  fulfilling  the  contract.  All  right,  I  said,  you're  a 
minister  of  the  Gospel,  you  could  marry  us  at  home, 
so  you  can  do  it  here,  only  it  won't  be  legal  till  we're 
re-married  at  the  Consulate.  But  it'll  be  a  marriage 
in  God's  eyes,  which  is  the  great  thing.  I  felt  reckless 
about  it  somehow.  Of  course  I'm  not  going  to  live 
with  Eb  until  all  this  trouble's  over  and  everything  is 
legal.  Well,  after  that  was  done  with,  the  country 
round  seemed  to  be  getting  jumpy  and  Mbogo  sent  to 
say  the  Ruga-ruga  under  that  Devil,  Ayub,  were  com- 
ing to  attack  us,  coming  with  lots  of  men  and  guns. 


THE  ATTACK  ON  THE  STATION         203 

So  we  sent  out  word  to  the  Masai,  and  they  turned  up 
well.  About  three  hundred  spears.  But  after  a  bit 
they  got  tired  of  waiting,  so  went  off  somewhere  else 
to  do  some  raiding  on  their  own  account. 

Towards  the  end  of  October  —  perhaps  it  was  the 
28th  —  no  sooner  was  our  first  bell  rung  for  dressing 

—  half-past  five  —  than  we  heard  the  most  unearthly 
yelling  and  a  tremendous  firing  of  guns.     I  just  got  my 
clothes  and  boots  on  anyhow  and  the  men  turned  out  in 
shirts  and  trousers  and  with  their  boots  unlaced.     The 
bullets  were  flying  like  hail  above  the  stockade,  first  of 
all  too  high.     We  dared  not  go  to  peep  through  for 
fear  of  being  shot.     Well,  John  didn't  lose  his  head  one 
bit.     He  gave  out  the  Sniders  to  all  our  \Valunga  who 
could  use  them,  and  he  and  Bayley  and  Anderson  took 
up  the  posts  they  had  settled  beforehand. 

Then  the  Ruga-ruga  made  a  rush  almost  up  to 
the  ditch  which  they  seemed  not  to  expect,  and  John 
and  the  men  let  them  have  it.  Five  or  six  were  killed. 
After  that  Mbogo's  Walunga  came  up  and  took  them 
on  the  flank  with  guns  and  spears,  and  they  didn't  like 
it  at  all  and  withdrew  for  a  spell.  But  I  can't  tell  you 
everything —  Perhaps  some  day  I  will  if  you  ever  care 
to  hear  it  —  I've  got  to  write  to  John's  mother  as  well 
as  you. 

The  fighting  in  the  afternoon  was  chiefly  between 
the  Ruga-ruga  and  Mbogo's  villages.  I  suppose  they 
thought  they'd  better  finish  them  off  before  they  came 
again  to  us.  They  drove  Mbogo's  people  out  of  all 
their  villages  except  the  big  one  near  us,  where  Mbogo 
lives.  This  was  higher  up,  and  Mbogo  and  John  had 
worked  at  its  fortification  on  Captain  Brentham's  plan 

—  it  turned  out  to  be  much  more  easily  defended  than 
our  place.     Fortunately  also  the  Ruga-ruga   and  the 
Arabs  don't  like  fighting  at  night  —  Oh  my  headache, 
I  must  leave  off  for  a  bit.  .  .  . 


204      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

Well,  during  that  night  we  worked  like  Trojans  — 
Who  were  the  Trojans  and  why  did  they  work  hard? 
You  ought  to  know  with  your  superior  education.  We 
dug  out  a  square  pit  in  the  middle  of  the  station  and 
lined  it  with  dry  grass.  In  it  we  arranged  chairs  and 
mattresses  so  that  we  could  rest  and  sleep  here  out  of 
reach  of  the  bullets.  We  also  turned  the  Chapel  into 
a  living-house  and  store,  because  its  brick  walls  and 
iron  roof  made  it  secure  against  fire  and  fairly  safe 
from  bullets. 

On  the  second  day  the  Ruga-ruga,  led  on  by  Ayub, 
attacked  us  on  the  west  side,  where  our  stockade  was 
weakest  and  where  we  were  overlooked  a  little  by  that 
mound  we  used  to  call  the  Snakes's  Hill.  Brother 
Bayley  was  standing  talking  to  me  about  some  dress- 
ings he  wanted  for  Josiah  Briggs  who  had  been  shot  in 
the  foot,  when  suddenly  he  uttered  a  shriek,  whirled 
round  and  fell  at  my  feet.  He  died  a  few  minutes 
afterwards.  John  was  so  infuriated  at  his  death  that 
in  spite  of  my  shouts  to  be  careful,  he  climbed  up  to  a 
look-out  post  and  fired  his  double-barrelled  sporting 
rifle  at  a  group  of  Ruga-ruga  on  Snakes's  Hill. 
Whilst  he  was  stooping  to  reload  a  poisoned  arrow 
struck  him  on  the  chest  and  penetrated  his  lung.  A 
good  many  of  the  Ruga-ruga  were  Manyema  savages, 
slaves  of  the  Arabs,  and  they  fought  with  bows  and 
poisoned  arrows.  John  scrambled  down  somehow  on 
to  the  ground.  Ebenezer  Anderson  helped  me  to  carry 
him  into  the  pit  shelter  and  there  we  undressed  him. 
He  was  streaming  with  blood  and  coughing  up  blood 
and  fast  losing  consciousness.  Somehow  or  other  — 
oh,  what  a  time  it  was !  —  we  got  the  arrow-head  out 
of  the  wound.  I  don't  know  even  now  how,  for  we 
were  both  of  us  bunglers  and  it  had  got  partly  wedged 
in  the  ribs.  And  we  had  to  cut  the  poor  dear  about. 
Fortunately  we  had  Bayley's  instruments  down  with  us 


THE  ATTACK  ON  THE  STATION         205 

in  this  pit.  But  I  can't  go  into  all  these  details.  Shall 
I  ever  get  this  letter  finished  ? 

Whilst  we  were  attending  to  John  we  heard  a  tre- 
mendous shouting.  It  was  the  Humba  war  song  —  the 
Masai,  you  know.  They  had  come  at  last  to  our  as- 
sistance and  taken  the  Ruga-ruga  rather  by  surprise. 
But  just  before  they  made  their  rush  up  the  hill,  the 
Ruga-ruga  had  contrived  to  shoot  arrows  with  flaming 
cotton  soaked  in  oil  on  to  our  thatched  roofs.  Fire 
was  spreading  from  building  to  building  except  the 
Chapel  and  the  store.  My  Big-geru  had  lost  their 
heads.  Up  to  that  time  they  had  been  so  good.  Our 
Walunga  were  trying  to  open  the  doors  of  the  stockade 
and  dash  out  into  the  open  country.  Then  the  Ruga- 
ruga  would  have  broken  in  and  all  would  have  been  ur> 
with  us.  Fortunately  the  charge  of  the  Masai  came 
at  that  very  moment,  when  I  was  beginning  to  doubt  if 
God  had  not  forgotten  us.  They  killed  lots  of  the 
Ruga-ruga  and  would  hack  off  their  heads  and  throw 
them  back  into  our  stockade. 

Then  the  Ruga-ruga  seemed  to  get  reinforcements 
from  the  Ugogo  direction  —  quite  a  large  body  of 
men,  they  say,  led  by  two  Arabs  —  the  two  Arabs 
whom  John  had  got  expelled  a  year  ago  by  Mbogo  for 
trading  in  slaves.  They  had  got  a  small  cannon  and 
its  noise  and  the  landing  of  a  stone  cannon  ball  in  the 
middle  of  a  party  of  Masai  gave  them  a  fright,  so  that 
all  of  the  Masai  drew  off  from  near  our  station  and  ran 
round  to  the  high  ground  behind  Mbogo's  town.  Once 
more  it  seemed  as  though  nothing  could  save  us.  The 
Ruga-ruga  fired  stone  balls  at  our  stockade  and  seemed 
making  up  their  minds  to  a  rush. 

Ebenezer  was  just  splendid  at  this  time.  I'm  not 
sorry  now  I  agreed  to  marry  him,  though  the  poor  dear 
is  still  pretty  bad  and  hardly  right  in  his  mind  yet. 
But  just  at  this  critical  moment  he  and  Josiah  and  five 


206      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

of  our  men  who  knew  how  to  handle  guns  kept  up  such 
a  fire  with  the  rifles  that  they  shot  down  several  of  the 
big  men  among  the  enemy.  Then  poor  Josiah  was 
shot  in  the  stomach  and  died  an  hour  or  two  after- 
wards. Ebenezer  got  a  splinter  of  wood  in  his  eye  — 
through  a  cannon  ball  striking  a  post  near  him,  and  he 
was  put  out  of  action  for  a  bit.  Meantime  nothing 
more  happened.  There  was  a  lull.  The  Ruga-ruga 
drew  off  out  of  sight. 

I  could  think  of  nothing  but  John  all  this  time, 
though  I  had  a  feeling  of  being  stunned  and  hurt  my- 
self. He  recovered  consciousness  and  talked  of  no 
one  but  you.  I  think  he  thought  you  were  with  him 
all  the  time,  and  I  confess  that  hurt  me.  It  was  Lucy 
my  darling,  my  own  true  wife  —  and  I  wondered 
whether  you  were  —  and  Lucy  you've  come  back  and 
now  we'll  go  home  together.  .  .  .  He  didn't  mention 
my  name  once,  and  I  can't  remember  that  he  said  a 
word  about  God.  Perhaps  he  didn't  know  he  was 
dying.  Towards  the  last  his  body  swelled  dreadfully 
and  he  sank  into  a  stupor.  He  must  have  died  just 
about  sunset.  When  he  was  going  I  seemed  to  be 
going  too.  I  suppose  I  fainted,  for  when  one  of  my 
Big-geru  came  down  into  the  pit  with  some  broth  she'd 
made  she  set  up  a  howling  and  a  yelling  saying  we 
were  both  dead,  that  Bwana  Fulata,  as  they  called 
John,  had  taken  me  with  him. 

My  girls  undressed  me  and  found  then  that  I  had 
been  wounded  all  the  time.  A  slug  or  a  rusty  nail 
fired  out  of  one  of  the  guns  had  ripped  across  my 
shoulders  and  the  back  of  my  head  and  I'd  never  no- 
ticed it.  It  must  have  been  when  Eb  and  I  were  help- 
ing John  down  into  the  pit  —  I  thought  some  one  then 
had  given  me  a  push.  And  while  I  sat  beside  John 
the  blood  had  soaked  all  the  back  of  my  bodice  and 
caked  quite  hard.  It's  left  a  kind  of  blood-poisoning, 
but  I'm  getting  over  it.  Only  it  causes  these  awful 


THE  ATTACK  ON  THE  STATION         207 

headaches.  And  poor  Eb  before  the  fighting  finished 
got  hit  in  the  arm,  and  then  from  our  clumsy  attempts 
to  extract  the  iron  filings  which  had  struck  him  he  got 
blood-poisoning  too,  much  worse  than  me.  I  can't  say 
what  his  temperature  went  up  to  because  I  can't  find 
any  of  our  clinical  thermometers,  but  to  judge  from 
his  ravings  it  must  have  been  pretty  high. 

In  the  night  following  that  second  day,  Mbogo  came 
with  a  lot  of  his  headmen  and  took  us  three  away  and 
all  our  Big-gem  to  inside  his  own  village  and  put  us 
in  his  women's  quarters.  He's  a  white  man  if  you  like, 
under  his  skin.  He  was  afraid  we  might  all  be  burnt 
to  death  by  the  fire  spreading  inside  our  station.  So 
we  should  have  done.  I  lost  my  senses  that  night  from 
weakness  or  shock  or  something.  When  I  came  to 
again  I  could  hardly  move  my  head  for  pain.  But  my 
girls  bathed  me  and  gave  me  wonderful  potions  of 
their  own  making  and  I  was  able  to  sit  up.  Mbogo 
came  in,  but  spoke  behind  the  door  for  modesty. 
What  do  you  think  of  that  in  a  black  savage?  A 
"  Mshenzi " !  Because  he  thought  I  might  be  un- 
dressed. But  he  said  in  Swahili :  "  Fear  no  more. 
Your  friends  are  coming." 

The  next  morning  I  heard  that  AH  bin  Ferhani, 
who'd  been  a  friend  of  John's  —  you  remember?  — 
had  come  with  a  big  party  of  his  followers,  and  hearing 
he  was  on  his  way  the  Ruga-ruga  had  bolted  because 
they  all  respect  him  as  a  "  Sheikh."  He  says  he  is 
going  to  stop  here  with  his  men  till  peace  comes,  or  at 
any  rate  till  white  people  take  command  here. 

Your  Masai  messengers  came  two  days  after  AH  bin 
Ferhani  had  arrived,  and  I  wrote  with  great  difficulty 
the  message  I  sent  you  and  got  the  Big-geru  to  do  it  up 
for  me.  Some  of  them  write  quite  nicely  themselves 
now,  but  only  in  Kagulu. 

There's  lots  and  lots  more  I  could  tell  you  if  we  ever 
meet  again  or  I  ever  have  time  and  plenty  of  paper. 


208      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

After  the  Ruga-ruga  were  gone  and  the  fires  were 
beaten  out  my  Big-geru  searched  in  the  Chapel  and  the 
ruins  of  the  school  houses  and  found  three  copy-books 
and  a  stone  bottle  of  ink  and  some  pens.  I've  used 
nearly  a  copy-book  each  for  you  and  John's  mother 
and  a  bit  of  a  one  writing  to  Mr.  Callaway  and  a  short 
note  to  Mr.  Bayley's  mother.  I  haven't  made  a  proper 
search  yet,  but  I  can't  find  any  will  left  by  John.  I 
don't  suppose  he  had  much  to  leave  you. 

You'd  better  go  now  and  marry  your  Captain.  It's 
the  least  he  can  do  after  compromising  you,  whether 
it  was  his  fault  or  not.  You  never  loved  John  as  he 
deserved  to  be  loved  and  you  did  wrong  to  become 
engaged  to  him,  as  his  mother  always  said.  If  you 
hadn't  been  there  he'd  have  married  me.  And  we 
should  have  been  happy  as  happy  because  I'd  have 
slaved  for  him.  I  loved  him  from  the  time  we  first 
met,  because  he  was  kind  and  polite  to  me  even  though 
I  was  not  well  favoured.  He  never  laughed  at  my 
hymns  as  you  used  to  do.  They  may  have  been  rub- 
bish, but  I  meant  well.  In  those  days  I  was  that  reli- 
gious it  had  to  come  out  somehow.  I  said  I  loved  the 
Lord  and  I  did  —  I  thought.  I  ain't  so  sure  about  it 
now.  His  ways  are  truly  past  finding  out  and  I've 
given  up  trying,  though  I  shall  stick  to  Mission  work 
for  John's  sake.  John  would  have  said  the  coming  of 
Ali  bin  Ferhani  was  providential,  but  why  couldn't 
Providence  have  acted  a  bit  sooner  and  saved  John 
and  Brother  Bayley?  I  suppose  we  shall  know  some 
day.  .  .  . 

Well,  good-bye,  Lucy.  Let  me  have  a  line  to  say 
you  got  this  packet.  I've  no  envelope  to  put  it  in. 

I  was  going  to  finish  up  with  Yours  in  the  love  of 
Jesus,  but  I  really  don't  know.  .  .  . 

ANN  ANDERSON. 

P.S.     If  you  ever  get  to  England  and  back  Reading 


THE  ATTACK  ON  THE  STATION         209 

way,  give  my  love  to  the  Miss  Calthorps  and  go  in  and 
see  my  Uncle  at  the  shop  and  say  I'm  trying  to  do  my 
duty  out  here  and  he  isn't  to  bother.  I  think  perhaps 
you'd  better  not  go  near  Mrs.  Baines  —  John's  mother. 
You  never  know  how  she'll  take  things.  She  was  that 
set  on  John. 

December  i. 

AH  bin  Ferhani's  pretty  sure  to-day  he  can  get  these 
letters  through,  so  off  this  goes.  I  forgot  to  say  that 
we're  going  to  bury  John  and  Mr.  Bayley  side  by  side 
in  the  pit  we  dug  in  the  middle  of  the  station.  Eb  is 
not  in  a  fit  state  to  be  consulted,  though  his  tempera- 
ture seems  going  down.  But  I've  decided  for  him. 
As  soon  as  I  can  get  about  without  too  much  aches  and 
pains  I  shall  see  it  done.  If  you  get  home  you  might 
communicate  with  the  East  African  Mission  and  ar- 
range for  a  Stone  to  be  sent  out  to  be  put  up  over  the 
grave.  Somehow  it  seems  to  me  John  wants  to  be 
buried  there.  It  may  bring  good  luck  to  Hangodi. 

ANN. 


u 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE    RETURN    TO    UNGUJA 

P  the  scarcely-discernible  path  they  climbed,  leav- 
ing the  Happy  Valley  behind  them ;  over  the  foot- 
hills and  under  cliff  at  the  base  of  the  northern  escarp- 
ment, where  the  gaily  flowering  bushes  in  their  early 
spring  display  gave  way  to  tall  forest  trees,  hung  with 
lianas.  The  black  Colobus  monkeys  with  their  white- 
plumed  tails  chattered  and  showed  their  teeth  and 
flopped  from  branch  to  branch  in  the  leafy  canopy,  not 
used  to  this  tumultuous  invasion  of  their  solitudes. 
Then  suddenly  the  escarpment  rose  like  the  wall  of  a 
Babel  towering  into  Heaven.  How  could  any  way  for 
human  beings  walking  on  two  legs  be  found  up  these 
precipices?  But  despite  its  savagery  there  is  scarcely 
one  of  Africa's  fastnesses  that  has  not  been  trodden  by 
man,  and  although  the  practised  route  into  the  Happy 
Valley  was  from  the  south,  and  though  its  encompass- 
ing walls  of  cliff  on  either  side  and  at  the  northern  end 
of  its  lake  seemed  impassable,  there  were  ways  up  and 
over  them  known  to  the  Masai  and  Hamitic  and  Nilotic 
peoples  of  this  sequestered  rift  valley. 

Up  some  such  Via  mala  the  Masai  guides  were  now 
leading  Brentham's  caravan,  with  little  concern  for  the 
trepidation  it  caused.  The  white  man  and  woman 
and  the  silently  suffering  Goanese  cook  had  been 
obliged  to  descend  from  their  donkeys  and  trudge  with 
the  porters.  The  donkeys,  in  fact,  were  sent  to  the 
rear  of  the  procession,  and  Brentham  walked  in  front 
with  the  guides  and  a  few  disencumbered  porters  to 
help  Lucy  over  an  ascent  which  would  have  been 

210 


THE  RETURN  TO  UNGUJA  211 

thought  rough  climbing  in  the  Alps,  and  here  had  to  be 
made  without  any  paraphernalia  of  ropes  and  irons. 

Lucy  sometimes  had  to  shut  her  eyes  and  hold  her 
body  rigidly  pressed  against  the  wall  of  rock  that  she 
might  recover  from  vertigo  and  continue  with  shaking 
legs  her  ascent  of  a  twisting  path,  sometimes  only  fif- 
teen inches  broad  where  it  overhung  an  abyss.  Roger 
was  beside  himself  with  anxiety.  He  cast  about  in  his 
mind  for  safeguards  —  Ropes?  But  they  had  none. 
Lengths  of  cotton  cloth?  But  how  get  at  them  and 
apply  them,  when  any  extra  movement  might  turn 
Lucy  giddy  and  precipitate  her  into  the  tree-tops  far 
below?  Their  taciturn  Masai  guides,  pledged  only  to 
show  them  the  way  to  Kilimanjaro,  had  given  them  no 
warning  of  what  the  path  was  like  from  the  lake  shore, 
between  three  and  four  thousand  feet  above  sea  level, 
to  the  top  of  the  escarpment  at  seven  thousand  feet. 

Once  committed  to  the  ascent  the  caravan  had  to 
continue,  as  there  was  no  room  in  which  to  turn  the 
donkeys  round  and  descend  again  to  the  valley.  All 
Roger  could  do  was  to  insist  on  great  deliberation  in 
the  climb  and  frequent  halts,  though  this  policy  was 
not  endorsed  by  the  impatient  asses  behind.  When 
the  white  people  in  front  paused  to  negotiate  some  more 
than  usually  dangerous  section  of  the  path,  the  rest  of 
the  caravan  had  to  pause  too,  the  porters  with  their 
loads  poised  on  their  heads  and  their  sinewy  legs  trem- 
bling with  the  strain,  while  the  donkeys  pranced  with 
impatience  to  pass  them,  and  nearly  pushed  some  of 
them  and  their  loads  over  into  the  gulf  below. 

"  It's  no  good,"  Roger  would  say  to  his  companion, 
"  you  can't  get  round  this,  walking  upright ;  you  must 
go  on  hands  and  knees  and  crazvl  over  it.  Never  mind 
your  dress  or  your  knees.  If  your  skirt  is  torn  I'll 
make  you  one  out  of  buck-skin;  if  your  knees  are  cut 
it's  better  than  breaking  your  neck." 

He  had  never  lived  through  such  a  nightmare  as  this 


212      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

climb,  and  ran  down  in  sweat  for  sheer  apprehension  of 
an  irretrievable  disaster.  However  it  came  to  an  end 
at  last,  and  towards  that  end  its  difficulties  were  tem- 
pered by  the  path's  entry  into  gorges  where  there  were 
merciful  bays  of  level  ground,  places  to  rest  in  and 
stretch  oneself,  to  put  down  the  loads  and  regain  one's 
breath  and  ease  one's  palsied  legs.  From  the  jagged 
rocks  grew  out  horizontally  fleshy-leaved  aloes  with 
zebra  markings  of  green  and  white,  and  long  stalks  of 
blood-red  or  orange-yellow,  tubular  flowers,  haunted 
by  large  yellow-velvet  bees  with  probing  tongues. 
Huge  blue-black  ravens  with  arched  bills  and  white 
collars  perched  on  pinnacles  of  rock  above  the  path, 
or  set  out  to  sail  in  circles  over  the  gorge  below,  hoping 
no  doubt  some  beast  or  human  would  fall  and  die  and 
provide  sightless  eyeballs  and  protruding  entrails  for 
the  ravens'  feast. 

Lucy  thought  of  this  in  these  silent  halts  —  all  were 
too  exhausted  to  speak  —  and  shuddered.  Yet  for  a 
white  woman  of  that  period,  unsuitably  costumed  as 
she  was,  she  gave  no  more  trouble  to  her  male  com- 
panion than  she  could  help,  uttered  no  futile  complaints 
or  queries.  They  had  exchanged  but  little  conversa- 
tion during  the  two  days  which  had  elapsed  since  they 
received  Ann  Jamblin's  message.  John  Raines's  ghost, 
like  a  Banquo,  came  between  them.  Lucy  was  —  and 
looked  as  though  she  was  —  in  perfect  health.  Deep 
down  within  her  heart  she  was  quietly  content,  con- 
vinced now  that  somehow,  some  day,  she  would  marry 
Roger.  Equally  certain  was  she  that  none  of  the  ordi- 
nary dangers  of  African  travel  would  prevent  her  from 
reaching  the  coast  under  his  escort ;  so  that  he  had  in 
her  a  more  cheerful  and  far  less  sulky  or  doleful  com- 
panion than  had  accompanied  the  unfortunate  John  on 
his  wedding  tour. 

After  the  ascent  of  the  escarpment  they  camped  two 
nights  in  succession  in  a  strange  region  suggestive  of 


THE  RETURN  TO  UNGUJA  213 

the  Moon's  surface  as  revealed  by  a  powerful  telescope. 
There  were  the  crumbling  sides  of  craters,  the  cones 
of  extinct  volcanoes  —  extinct,  perhaps;  but  sometimes 
a  strange  and  ominous-looking  white  smoke  or  gassy 
vapour  issued  from  cracks  in  the  ground  and  through 
veins  in  the  obsidian  rocks.  Vegetation  was  very 
scanty  —  a  few  yellow  stalks  of  bamboo  in  the  hollows ; 
and  water  was  scarce  enough  to  cause  anxiety  and  limit 
washing  to  a  minimum.  Yet  if  they  could  cross  this 
dry  belt  of  naked  rock  and  barren  mountain  and  the 
possibly  waterless  plain  that  lay  in  front  of  them,  to 
the  east  there  was  a  promise  of  better  things.  Far 
away,  a  blue  pyramid  seen  against  the  morning  sun, 
was  Mount  Meru,  one  of  the  great,  unmistakable  land- 
marks of  East  Africa.  It  towered  fifteen  thousand 
feet  into  the  sky  and  when  the  sun  turned  to  the  zenith 
and  the  west  they  could  see  the  peak  of  the  pyramid 
was  white  with  snow.  And  behind  Meru  in  the  early 
morning  or  in  the  early  evening  there  came  into  view 
something  at  first  unbelievable,  a  floating  island  in  the 
sky,  a  Laputa :  the  great  snowy  dome  of  Kibo.  .  .  . 

A  few  days  of  rough,  silent  travel  —  seeing  no  na- 
tives and  very  few  birds  and  beasts  —  and  they  were 
in  the  Kisongo  plains.  Here  it  was  less  arid,  and  be- 
neath the  burnt  stems  of  the  old  grass  the  fresh  green 
grass  was  springing.  The  occasional  scrubby  trees  and 
bushes  were  putting  forth  fresh  leaves,  sometimes 
quite  red  in  colour,  or  even  purplish  black.  Big  game 
swarmed  round  them  unafraid  of  man,  inclined  even 
to  be  insolent.  Rhinoceroses  charged  the  caravan  and 
both  Lucy  and  Roger  had  narrow  escapes  of  being 
tossed  on  their  horns,  while  Lucy  was  twice  flung  from 
her  donkey  when  it  bolted  with  terror  at  a  tangent 
from  the  unexpected  rush  of  the  squealing  monster. 
An  Nyamwezi  porter  was  gored  and  trampled,  his  load 
smashed  and  the  caravan  disorganized.  Roger  laid 
low  one  rhinoceros;  and  then,  water  being  near,  they 


214      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

spent  all  the  rest  of  that  day  and  the  next  cutting  up 
its  flesh,  smoking  it,  drying  it  in  the  sun,  and  making 
of  it  a  food  provision  greatly  wanted  by  the  porters. 

This  much-needed  rest  however  brought  another 
danger  on  them.  The  sound  of  rifle  firing,  the  assem- 
blage of  vultures,  the  noise  of  the  porters'  excited 
voices  attracted  the  attention  of  a  large  war  party  of 
Masai,  trailing  southward  to  see  what  was  up  in  this 
rumoured  war  between  the  Arabs  —  or,  as  they  called 
them,  the  "  coast "  people  —  and  the  White  men  .  .  . 
troubled  waters  in  which  they  might  fish  to  advantage. 
Lucy  was  sitting  in  camp  in  as  much  placid  enjoyment 
as  she  could  feel,  with  the  remembrance  of  John's  death 
in  the  background.  She  forgot,  at  any  rate  for  the 
moment,  her  remorse  and  her  anxieties  "  as  to  what 
people  would  say."  It  was  very  pleasant  to  rest  here 
and  to  know  that  she  would  not  have  to  rise  at  five  the 
next  morning  and  ride  nearly  all  day,  and  perhaps  have 
another  close  shave  from  a  charging  rhinoceros.  .  .  . 

Gradually  there  stole  on  her  ear  a  sound  like  distant 
thunder.  The  sky  was  clear  .  .  .  surely  it  couldn't 
be  a  whole  herd  of  rhinos,  or  a  distant  earthquake  — 
earthquakes  not  being  unknown  in  this  region  ?  Pres- 
ently the  Wanyamwezi  looked  up  anxiously  from  their 
camp  employments  or  their  parcelling  out  of  the  rhi- 
noceros meat.  Roger  was  away,  shooting  more  game. 
.  .  .  There  went  up  the  fear-inspiring  word : 
"Masai!" 

Then  appeared  on  the  north  a  cloud  of  red  dust  and 
out  of  this  emerged  a  small  army  of  red-coloured  men 
trailing  their  shields  by  lanyards,  with  a  rumbling 
noise,  waving  long-bladed  white-flashing  spears,  and 
uttering  a  growling  chant,  a  war-song  of  bloodthirsty 
purport,  though  its  words  were  not  understood  by  the 
people  in  the  undefended  camp. 

The  Swahili  Kiongozi  fortunately  was  on  the  spot, 
and  then  and  at  other  times  never  lost  his  head.  He 


THE  RETURN  TO  UNGUJA  215 

stood  quietly  beside  Lucy,  who  was  seated  in  her  deck- 
chair  with  her  white  umbrella  to  shade  her  from  the 
sun.  "  Starehe,  Bibi,"  he  said;  "  usiogope ;  Muungu 
anatulinda.  Hawa  ndio  Masai,  kweli;  walakini  tut- 
awashinda  na  akili."  l 

The  porters  just  stayed  where  they  were.  To  have 
started  to  run  would  —  they  knew  —  have  been  fatal. 
They  just  stood  about,  silent,  while  the  advancing  army 
—  perhaps  three  hundred  in  number  —  suddenly  halted 
and  lay  down  behind  their  large,  gaily-painted  shields. 
The  two  men  of  the  expedition  who  knew  the  Masai 
language  drew  up  to  the  Kiongozi  —  unfortunately  the 
Masai  guides  were  away,  out  hunting  with  Roger.  A 
hundred  yards  distant  there  stood  out  one  superb 
Masai  warrior,  the  leader  of  the  party;  a  naked  figure 
of  perfect  manhood,  red  in  colour,  with  a  naturally 
brown  skin,  raddled  with  ochre  and  powdered  with  the 
dust  of  the  red  ground.  The  vertical  sun  seemed  to 
make  a  red  halo  round  the  outline  of  his  beautiful  body. 
He  held  a  tuft  of  grass  in  his  hand  and  shouted  in  an 
authoritative  voice:  "  Totona!  "  (Sit  down!) 

At  once  the  men  of  Brentham's  caravan  obeyed  him. 
All  sat  down  and  plucked  tufts  of  fresh  green  grass. 
Then  the  Masai  spokesman  advanced  slowly  .  .  .  won- 
deringly  .  .  .  peeringly  towards  the  white  woman,  re- 
clining on  the  deck-chair.  "  What  is  this?  "  he  asked 
the  headman  and  the  two  interpreters.  "  This,"  they 
replied,  glad  to  get  a  chance  of  making  an  impression, 
"  this  is  a  WHITE  WOMAN  of  the  great  race  of  the 
Wa-ingrezi.  Her  husband  is  the  great  chief,  the  Balozi 
of  the  Wa-ingrezi  on  the  coast.  We  come  now  from 
the  Manyara  country,  guided  by  your  own  people,  the 
Masai.  There  is  war  to  the  south,  in  Nguru  and 
Ugogo,  war  between  the  Lajomba  and  the  White  men. 

1 "  Be  tranquil,  Lady.  Do  not  fear.  God  is  guarding  us 
These  indeed  are  Masai  truly,  but  we  shall  overcome  them  with 
intelligence." 


216      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

Our  Balozi  is  taking  his  wife  to  the  coast  to  put  her 
with  his  own  people ;  then  he  will  return  and  finish  the 
Lajomba." 

"  Good,"  said  the  Masai  war-captain.  "  We  heard 
of  this  war  and  we  are  going  there  to  see  if  we  can  join 
in.  We  hate  the  Lajomba." 

At  this  moment  there  was  a  stir  among  the  three 
hundred  warriors  sitting  apart.  It  was  caused  by  the 
approach  of  Brentham,  filled  with  apprehension  and 
anxiety  as  to  Lucy.  Unfortunately  his  own  Masai 
guides  belonged  to  a  southern  clan  of  the  Masai,  not  on 
very  good  terms  with  this  more  northern,  purer  breed. 
So  there  was  a  ruffle  of  angry  words  as  each  realized 
the  other  as  whilom  foes.  But  the  leader  who  had  been 
sitting  close  to  Lucy  rose  to  his  feet  and  spoke  with  a 
carrying  voice  —  rather  than  shouted  —  a  command 
and  once  more  his  warriors  sat  down.  He  then  took 
Lucy's  hand,  but  quite  gently.  His  own  hand  had 
well-trimmed  nails  and  was  clean  except  for  the  red 
dust.  He  turned  back  her  sleeve  a  little  (she  trembled, 
but  tried  to  smile).  Having  satisfied  himself  that  the 
arm  was  even  whiter  than  the  hand,  he  threw  back  his 
head  and  laughed  a  full-throated  laugh,  while  his  eyes 
sparkled  with  the  wonderment  of  it  all.  Seeing  her 
smile  he  looked  at  her  with  such  a  friendly  glance  that 
she  felt  completely  reassured.  Then  he  sat  down 
again,  took  snuff,  and  was  framing  other  questions 
when  Roger  strode  up.  "  It  is  all  well,  master,"  said 
the  headman  hurriedly  in  Swahili. 

"  Why,  you're  holding  quite  a  court,  Lucy,"  said 
Roger,  inwardly  immensely  relieved. 

"  Ye-es.     But  I  shall  be  rather  glad  when  they  all 

go." 

The  Masai  leader  rose  to  his  feet  and  held  out  his 
hand  to  Brentham.  The  latter  took  it  and  White  man 
and  Red  man  looked  for  a  moment  into  each  other's 
eyes.  Roger,  knowing  something  of  Masai  customs  — 


THE  RETURN  TO  UNGUJA  217 

was  he  not  Indeed  but  three  or  four  marches  from 
scenes  of  earlier  exploration?  —  did  not  shrink  away 
when  the  Masai  captain  spat  on  his  clothing  and  on 
Lucy's  dress.  He  knew  it  was  intended  for  the  friend- 
liest of  greetings,  a  seal  on  their  good  relations. 

After  that,  all  was  boisterous  good-fellowship,  though 
the  Wanyamwezi  porters  were  careful  to  keep  together 
and  half  carelessly  to  reclaim  their  rifles.  The  three 
hundred  Masai  agreed  to  overlook  the  fact  that  Roger's 
guides  had  belonged  to  a  once  hostile  clan.  And  when 
they  learnt  from  these  men  what  a  hunter  he  was  and 
what  an  unerring  shot,  they  pressed  their  friendship 
and  their  red  presence  on  him.  They  visited  his  tent 
—  they  were  throughout  strictly  honest  —  they  sat  on 
his  bed,  and  he  had  afterwards  to  do  without  sheet  and 
pillow  case,  for  besides  leaving  red  dust  wherever  they 
sat  they  distributed  a  flavour  of  tallow  from  their  fa- 
vourite unguent,  mutton  fat.  They  insisted  on  blood- 
brotherhood  and  declared  they  would  escort  the  white 
chieftain  and  his  lady  to  the  coast. 

As  a  matter  of  prosaic  fact,  they  took  him  no  farther 
than  the  base  of  Meru.  There  the  rainy  season  began 
to  break  with  vehemence.  So  there  they  left  him  and 
went  off  to  the  drier  steppe  country  and  the  War  in 
the  south  with  its  possibilities  of  loot. 

Roger  longed  at  this  time  to  ascend  Meru  and  ex- 
plore its  hidden  wonders ;  and  Lucy  gazed  with  awe  at 
the  now  fully  displayed  majesty  of  Kilimanjaro,  rising 
above  the  watery  plain  of  Kahe,  with  its  dome  of  snow 
and  ice,  and  its  lesser  peak  of  Kimawenzi. 

But  being  short  of  stores  they  made  straight  for  a 
newly-founded  Evangelical  Mission  station,  at  an  alti- 
tude of  four  thousand  feet,  where  it  was  hoped  Lucy 
might  find  shelter  for  a  few  days  from  the  torrential 
rains,  and  he  himself  gather  news  about  the  happen- 
ings on  the  coast,  and  dispatch  carriers  to  Mvita  with 
messages  which  might  be  telegraphed  to  Unguja. 


218      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

After  all  their  adventures  this  seemed  rather  a  pro- 
saic phase  in  the  journey,  and  Lucy  found  herself 
actually  depressed  at  being  once  more  with  fellow- 
countrymen.  There  were  three  missionaries  —  a  mar- 
ried couple  and  an  assistant  bachelor  propagandist  —  at 
the  station  of  the  Evangelical  Mission,  but  they  did  not 
seem  over  surprised  at  this  arrival  of  a  white  man  and 
woman  from  the  unknown  interior.  They  received 
Lucy's  halting  explanations  civilly  but  coldly,  and 
though  they  gave  her  a  room  to  herself  and  nicely 
cooked  meals,  they  seemed  —  to  her  fancy  —  to  have 
purposely  adopted  an  almost  penitentiary  surfeit  of 
services  and  prayers. 

Captain  Brentham  preferred  to  camp  out  at  the 
Chief's  village,  two  miles  away.  He  had  known  this 
genial,  old,  one-eyed  ruffian  three  years  before,  when 
he  was  exploring  the  approaches  to  the  great  Snow 
Mountain,  and  making  tentative  treaties  to  forestall  the 
Germans.  lie  rather  ground  his  teeth  over  the  chang- 
ing scene.  Since  his  first  journey,  missionaries,  big- 
game  sportsmen,  concession  hunters,  had  thronged  into 
this  wonderful  country,  and  had  not  the  slightest  re- 
spect for  its  earliest  pioneers.  Already  there  was  a 
large  and  flourishing  mission  station  on  the  site  of  his 
first  camp;  and  when  on  installing  Lucy  there  he  had 
drawn  the  missionaries'  attention  to  this  fact,  and  to 
his  having  made  the  site  ready  for  them,  purchased  it 
in  fact,  the  present  occupants  merely  said  with  pursed 
lips,  "Indeed?";  and  Mrs.  Missionary  added  primly: 
"  Yes:  we  heard  from  the  Chief  you  had  stayed  here, 
three  years  ago ;  but  we  prefer  never  to  listen  to  gossip 
about  white  people.  It  is  so  often  ill-natured." 

And  so  onwards  to  the  Taita  Hills  and  the  coast.  A 
sense  of  flatness,  a  leaking-out  of  all  romance  in  their 
adventure.  They  were  no  longer  alone.  Lucy  went 
to  see  Mr.  Thomas  at  the  East  African  Mission  station 
in  Taita.  He  startled  her  by  asking  cheery  questions 


219 

about  John,  his  old  college-mate,  and  supposing  John 
was  with  her  on  this  safari.  He  had  heard  nothing 
about  the  disaster  and  made  rather  stupid  and  inquisi- 
tive inquiries  as  to  the  motives  of  her  journey.  Far- 
ther on,  they  had  the  misery  of  crossing  the  red 
Maungu  desert,  with  its  stretch  of  forty  miles  between 
water  and  water;  but  there  was  no  "  adventure  "  about 
this;  and  midway  they  met  the  caravan  of  a  very  rich 
Englishman  with  two  companions,  wearing  single  eye- 
glasses, who  offered  them  champagne  and  soda-water 
at  midday  to  relieve  their  thirst,  and  told  Lucy  he 
wasn't  surprised  at  her  travelling  about  with  a  stray 
Consul,  as  he  always  contended  that  missionaries  out 
in  Africa  had  a  jolly  good  time  and  did  themselves  un- 
commonly well,  and  for  his  part  he  didn't  blame  her. 
"  Gather  ye  roses,  don't  you  know  —  while  you  can  — 
or  was  it  while  you're  young?  And  now  I  suppose 
you're  on  your  way  back  to  Hubby  ?  " 

The  old  Arab  port  of  Mvita  was  not  much  altered 
since  Roger  had  seen  it  last ;  though  there  was  the  be- 
ginning of  a  stir,  for  a  British  Chartered  Company  was 
preparing  to  make  this  their  head-quarters.  Mean- 
time, the  centre  of  rank  and  fashion,  so  to  speak,  was 
the  British  Consulate.  Roger  made  his  way  here,  with 
Lucy  and  Halima,  while  he  left  the  bulk  of  his  caravan 
encamped  across  the  water. 

His  colleague,  the  Vice-Consul,  was  an  ex-Naval 
Officer,  who  had  given  up  the  Navy  for  a  while  to  serve 
in  the  East  African  Consulates,  in  the  idea  that  they 
entailed  little  office  work,  good  pay,  and  any  amount  of 
shooting,  varied  with  agreeable  safaris  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  Government.  This  particular  example  of 
his  kind  had  been  rather  sharply  called  back  to  more 
humdrum  duties  and  the  preparation  of  statistics  by 
Roger  himself,  when  he  was  acting  Consul-General. 
So  now  was  the  time  to  get  his  own  back :  — 

"  Hullo,  old  chap !     Who'd  have  thought  it.     Where 


220      THE  MAX  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

have  you  sprung  from?  We'd  all  given  you  up  for 
lost  —  thought  you'd  gone  '  Fanti,'  eloped  with  a  mis- 
sionaryess  for  the  far  interior  and  were  founding  an 
empire  on  your  own.  .  .  ." 

"  I've  brought  here,"  interrupted  Roger,  with  a  set 
face,  "Mrs.  John  Baines"  (Lucy  had  retreated  out  of 
ear-shot  with  Halima  to  the  verandah  of  the  Consulate) 
— "  Mrs.  John  Baines,  whose  husband  has  been  killed, 
I  fear,  in  the  Ulunga  country.  I  should  be  much 
obliged  if  you  could  put  her  up  here  till  we  can  get  a 
dau  to  take  us  over  to  Unguja.  ...  As  for  me  .  .  ." 

"  Awfully  sorry  old  chap.  Of  course,  I  can  make 
room  for  you  .  .  .  give  you  some  sort  of  a  shake- 
down. .  .  .  You're  a  fellow  man  and  you'll  under- 
stand. .  .  .  But  the  fact  is  I'm  —  I'm  not  —  quite  pre- 
pared —  er  —  to  entertain  a  white  lady  here.  Bache- 
lor establishment  you  know.  .  .  .  You  twig?  .  .  . 
Dare  say  you're  fixed  up  just  the  same  at  —  where  is 
it  ?  at  Medina,  What  ?  " 

Roger  turned  away  angrily. 

"Lucy!  .  .  .  Mrs.  Baines!" 

"  Yes,  Captain  Brentham." 

"  I'll  get  a  boat  and  we'll  go  over  to  the  Mission 
station  across  the  Bay.  I  expect  they'll  have  room 
—  indeed  they  must  make  room  —  for  you  there  till 
our  dau  is  ready  to  sail.  .  .  ." 

Then  turning  to  the  Vice-Consul :  "  Be  good 
enough  to  send  a  cablegram  to-day  to  the  Agency  at 
Unguja  stating  that  H.M.  Consul  for  Zangia  arrived 
here  this  morning  from  the  interior  with  Mrs.  John 
Baines  from  Ulunga,  and  add  that  I  shall  arrive  at 
Unguja  to  report  as  soon  as  I  can  charter  a  dau ;  un- 
less a  gun-boat  comes  in  first.  My  Camp  is  at  Kisolu- 
tini.  You  can  send  on  any  letters  that  come  for  me 
there.  .  .  ." 

"  Well,  but  I  say  .  .  ." 

Roger  having  been  joined  by  the  wondering  and  dis- 


THE  RETURN  TO  UNGUJA  221 

appointed  Lucy,  who  had  taken  a  great  fancy  to  the 
picturesque  Consulate,  strode  out  with  an  angry  face, 
flushed  under  the  tan. 

No  return  message  came  for  him  from  the  Agency  at 
Unguja.  And  a  few  days  afterwards  he  embarked 
with  Lucy  and  Halima  (who  had  already  agreed  to 
marry  the  Goanese  cook),  his  Wanyamwezi  porters, 
and  a  selected  collection  of  trophies  and  mineralogical 
specimens,  in  an  Arab  dau,  for  the  island  port  of 
Unguja.  This  time  —  December  27,  1888  —  Lucy 
was  too  anxious  about  her  future  to  notice  or  to  care 
whether  it  had  bugs  or  not  in  its  rotting  timbers  or  its 
frowsy  thatch. 

Meantime,  unfriendly  forces  were  at  work  to 
Roger's  detriment.  Here  is  a  letter  which  Mrs.  Spen- 
cer Bazzard  probably  wrote  to  Mr.  Bennet  Molyneux, 
of  the  Foreign  Office.  (Like  most  of  the  letters  ap- 
pearing in  this  book,  it  is  based  on  my  deductions  as 
to  the  kind  of  letter  that  would  have  been  written  under 
the  circumstances,  rather  than  on  textual  evidence)  :  — 

H.B.M.  Consulate  for  Zangia, 
Medinat-al-Barkah, 

December  23,  1888. 
DEAR  MR.  MOLYNEUX, — 

I  hope  you  don't  resent  my  letters.  You  don't  an- 
swer them,  but  then  I  told  you  not  to.  I  shouldn't 
like  to  be  a  bore  to  you,  or  for .  you  to  feel  —  amid 
your  piles  of  work  —  that  you  had  an  extra  letter  to 
write  to  an  importunate  little  person  in  far-off  East 
Africa.  I  said  once  I  should  go  on  writing  every  now 
and  again,  unless  you  ordered  me  to  stop.  As  you 
haven't  —  Well!  Here  is  another  budget  of  East 
African  news. 

We  have  had  alarums  and  excursions,  as  Shake- 
speare says.  You  will  see  by  this  address  that  I  am  on 
the  mainland  with  my  husband.  When  Captain  B.  dis- 


222      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

appeared  last  September  into  the  ewigkeit  the  Agency 
at  Unguja  began  receiving  disquieting  stories  as  to 
what  was  taking  place  in  his  absence.  He  had  only 
left  an  Indian  clerk  in  charge,  and  complaints  arose 
from  Indian  merchants  and  English  missionaries  that 
no  one  could  attend  to  their  business.  So  Sir  G.D. 
thought  it  best  to  send  Spence  over  here  to  take  charge, 
and,  of  course,  I  came  with  him  to  help  him  to  inter- 
pret. 

We  found  everything  (a  month  ago)  in  a  terrible 
muddle.  The  consulate  is  filthily  dirty,  the  archives 
are  just  anyhow,  and  Spence  fears  a  considerable  sum 
is  missing  from  the  Consular  receipts,  or  else  that  the 
clerk  is  muddled  in  his  accounts.  But  all  this  you  will 
hear  officially. 

Meantime,  we  are  all  uneasy  about  Captain  B.'s  dis- 
appearance. He  left  here  last  August  with  some  idea 
of  letting  the  missionaries  know  there  was  danger  of 
an  Arab  attack  on  all  white  people  independent  of  their 
nationality,  German  or  English.  He  seems  to  have 
translated  Sir  G.'s  brief  instructions  into  a  permission 
to  make  a  vast  tour  of  the  interior  —  a  delightful  thing 
to  do,  no  doubt,  but  not  when  you  have  a  Consulate  to 
look  after.  He  greatly  alarmed  all  the  missionaries, 
and,  as  it  appears,  somewhat  needlessly.  Those  who 
have  their  stations  in  Usagara  and  farther  south  are 
very  angry  with  him.  He  arrived  at  their  stations 
early  in  September  and  ordered  them  to  retire  on  the 
coast  —  or  at  any  rate  send  their  wives  and  children 
there,  as  the  Arabs  might  attack  at  once.  And  after 
they  had  obeyed  him  the  attacks  never  came  off !  One 
of  the  missionary  ladies  was  in  a  certain  condition,  it 
appears,  and  the  hurried  journey  so  upset  her  that  — 
how  shall  I  phrase  it  ?  —  her  hopes  were  disappointed. 

He  next  appeared  at  a  place  called  Hangodi  —  ac- 
cording to  native  report  —  and  was  so  anxious  about 
the  safety  of  a  fair  lady  there  (the  missionary  young 


THE  RETURN  TO  UNGUJA  223 

woman  who  travelled  out  with  him  and  me  a  year  and 
a  half  ago)  —  that  he  took  her  away  with  him  and  has 
seemingly  gone  waltzing  off  to  the  unknown  with  this 
fair  charge.  Quite  romantic,  isn't  it?  In  this  case  his 
warning  as  to  an  impending  attack  seems  to  have  been 
only  too  well  founded,  if  what  has  been  reported  to  the 
Germans  is  true.  Soon  after  he  left  this  place  —  Han- 
godi  —  it  was  apparently  attacked  and  destroyed  and 
the  missionaries  all  killed  —  except,  of  course,  the  lady 
who  left  with  him.  Ill-natured  people  will  naturally 
ask  why  he  did  not  stay  and  defend  the  station. 

It  is  only  two  days  off  Christmas,  and  I  can  picture 
to  myself  the  happy  preparations  going  on  at  Spilsbnry 
—  the  carols  the  village  children  are  practising  for 
Christmas  Day,  and  the  Christmas-tree  which  I  am 
sure  Mrs.  Molyneux  and  your  daughter  are  preparing 
for  their  reward. 

These  ridiculous  sentimental  Germans  are,  of  course, 
getting  up  Christmas-trees,  too,  and  are  practising 
Carols  to  be  sung  round  them,  though  the  town  is  still 
more  or  less  besieged  on  the  landward  side.  Who  and 
what  was  Good  King  Wenceslaus,  and  why  should  we 
sing  about  him  at  Christmastide  ?  There  is  no  library 
here,  except  the  one  they  have  at  the  French  Mission, 
and  that  mentions  nothing  about  Germany. 

We  are  told  here  that  a  certain  Captain  Wissmann 
will  soon  arrive  with  a  large  force  of  Sudanese  soldiers 
to  take  command  and  finish  the  Arabs. 

Still  no  news  of  Stanley,  except  it  be  the  wildest, 
most  improbable  rumours.  If  he  really  emerges  from 
the  heart  of  Africa  it  will  only  be  —  I  fear  —  to  fall 
into  some  ambush  laid  by  the  Arabs. 

With  our  united  kindest  regards  and  best  wishes  for 
1889, 

Believe  me,  dear  Mr.  Molyneux, 
Yours  sincerely, 

EMILIA  BAZZARD. 


224      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

Roger  and  Lucy  reached  Unguja  in  their  Arab  dau 
at  the  end  of  December,  when  the  Europeans  therefore 
were  recovering  from  the  surfeit  of  Christmas  junket- 
ings and  preparing  for  another  round  of  New  Year 
festivities,  but  a  little  bit  peevish  and  liverish  in  the 
interval.  The  arrival  of  the  British  Consul  for  Zangia 
was  not  unexpected,  because  telegraphic  news  of  his 
emergence  from  the  interior  had  already  reached  the 
British  Agency.  In  the  afternoon  of  December  2Qth 
he  walked  into  the  office  of  the  Agency  and  reported 
himself  to  Sir  Godfrey  Dewburn.  .  .  . 

"  Ah!  my  dear  Brentham,  how  are  you?  What  a 
time  you  must  have  had,  to  be  sure!  We  all  gave 
you  up  for  lost,  or  thought  you  had  gone  in  search  of 
Stanley  or  Emin,  or  were  off  to  attack  the  Mahdi. 
Well :  and  how  is  the  fair  companion  of  your  travels, 
Mrs.  —  Mrs.  ...  er  ..." 

Brentham:  "  Mrs.  John  Baines?  She  is,  I  believe, 
at  Mr.  Callaway's  at  the  present  moment.  I  advised 
her  to  go  there  as  he  is  Agent  here  for  their  Mission, 
and  would  probably  have  definite  news  about  —  about 
—  the  attack  on  her  husband's  station  .  .  .  and  the 
results.  Have  you  heard  anything,  Sir?  " 

Sir  Godfrey:  "  Nothing  more  than  the  rumour 
that  after  you  left  it  was  attacked,  and,  I  think,  all  the 
Whites  were  killed  .  .  ." 

At  this  moment  a  clerk  comes  in  and  says:  '  This 
is  a  note  with  an  enclosure,  Sir  Godfrey,  from  Mr. 
Callaway."  Sir  Godfrey  asks  Brentham  to  be  seated 
and  hastily  runs  his  eye  over  a  very  long  communica- 
tion. Five  minutes  elapse.  Then  whilst  he  is  still 
reading,  another  door  leading  to  the  residential  part  of 
the  Agency  opens  and  there  appears  a  handsome  woman 
of  middle  age,  with  the  stamp  of  elegance  and  fashion 
upon  her,  dressed  in  some  agreeable  adaptation  of  an 
Englishwoman's  dress  for  the  tropics.  She  says, 
"  Godf  rey,  my  dear,  tea's  ready  and  as  you  don't  like 


THE  RETURN  TO  UNGUJA  225 

it  drawn  or  cold  I  thought  if  I  came  myself  —  but  I 
see  you  have  a  visitor.  .  .  ." 

"Oh!  Ah!  .  .  .  Yes.  ...  To  be  sure.  .  .  .  Er. 
.  .  .  Brentham,  this  is  Lady  Dewburn — "  (They 
shake  hands.  Lady  Dewburn  looks  him  over  approv- 
ingly.) "  You'd  better  come  in  and  have  tea  with  us 
and  then  we  can  talk  over  this  extraordinary  communi- 
cation of  Callaway's.  It  couldn't  have  come  more  ap- 
propriately. Evidently  it  must  have  been  brought  by 
your  dau.  It's  been  sent  down  by  some  Arab  and  it  is 
all  about  the  attack  on  the  station  where  these  mission- 
ary friends  of  yours  were  living.  It  seems  they  were 
not  all  killed,  two  of  'em  at  any  rate  .  .  .  though  I 
think  the  husband  of  your  lady  friend  was.  .  .  .  But 
come  along  and  we'll  have  a  confab  all  about  it.  The 
Bazzards  are  over  at  your  Consulate  on  the  mainland, 
so  whilst  you're  here  you'd  better  take  possession  of 
their  quarters.  The  golden-haired  Emily  says  she  left 
it  in  apple-pie  order  when  she  departed  for  Medina. 
.  .  .  This  way  .  .  .  would  you  like  to  wash  your 
hands  first?  You  look  quite  the  Wild  Man  of  Borneo, 
and  I  don't  wonder.  .  .  .  Must  have  had  a  beastly 
time.  ...  I  should  suggest  a  whisky  and  soda  first 
and  tea  afterwards.  .  .  ." 

Lucy  meantime  was  reading  Ann  Anderson's  letter, 
given  in  a  previous  chapter.  She  had  been  placed  once 
more  in  the  bedroom  she  had  occupied  in  Mr.  Calla- 
way's house  before  her  marriage,  and  shuddered  at  the 
memories  it  enshrined.  Dear,  kind  Mrs.  Stott  was 
far  away  in  the  Happy  Valley  .  .  .  and  she  could  never 
again  hear  John's  voice  calling  to  her  from  the  court- 
yard under  the  great  fig-trees  that  the  Sultan's  carriage 
was  waiting  hard-by  to  take  them  for  a  drive ;  or  mak- 
ing some  other  proposition  which  she  probably  snubbed 
in  fretfulncss. 

She  was  consumed  with  remorse.  Ann's  statement 
that  in  his  last  agonies,  dying  with  poisoned  blood,  he 


226      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

had  only  thought  and  spoken  of  her,  made  her  heart 
ache,  almost  literally  —  the  aching  of  unshed  tears  over 
the  irrevocable.  She  had  not  been  unfaithful  to  him 
in  body;  but  in  mind,  in  desire,  yes:  from  the  day  of 
the  marriage  onwards,  and  never  more  so  than  from 
the  day  of  her  departure  from  Hangodi.  She  knew 
she  had  hoped  then  that  somehow  this  departure,  this 
desertion  of  John  when  danger  was  approaching  — 
might  be  the  beginning  of  her  severance  from  him.  and 
lead  to  her  union  with  Roger.  To  him  at  any  time 
during  the  long  safari  she  would  have  surrendered  her- 
self. .  .  . 

Yet  though  her  upper  consciousness  —  the  "  speak- 
ing to  one's  self"  (which  we  almost  do  sometimes 
aloud,  as  if  to  an  audience  that  may  register  our  words 
and  resolves)  — asserted  that  the  only  reparation  she 
could  make  was  never  to  see  Roger  again  —  what  a 
mercy  he  had  behaved  better  than  she  had  done!)  — 
her  innermost  intention  was  to  stay  on  in  Unguja  on 
some  pretext  or  other,  in  the  faint  hope  he  might  .  .  . 
might  ..."  do  the  right  thing,"  as  Ann  had  put  it 
.  .  .  might  marry  her.  If  he  would  only  do  that  her 
whole  remaining  life  should  be  one  long  atonement  to 
John.  She  would  never  forget  him  and  his  unselfish 
love  of  a  shallow,  ungrateful  wrjman. 

Mr.  Callaway  had  hinted  she  might  like  to  take  the 
next  steamer  home :  there  was  one  going  in  a  week  — 
back  to  England.  But  how  could  she  go  back  .  .  . 
and  face  Mrs.  Baines  .  .  .  and  live  on  her  parents? 
John  had  probably  no  money  to  leave  her;  the  Mission, 
after  so  short  a  term  of  married  life,  would  certainly 
give  her  no  pension  .  .  .  why  should  it?  The  post  of 
National  school-teacher  at  Aldermaston  was  long  ago 
filled  up.  And  could  she  even  resume  her  life  there? 
At  no  great  distance  was  Engledene,  with  Lord  and 
Lady  Silchester.  Lady  Silchester  she  vaguely  dreaded 
as  a  person  who  might  mock  at  her. —  She  must  have 


THE  RETURN  TO  UNGUJA  227 

heard  something  about  her  from  Captain  Brentham. 
What  —  what  —  what  was  she  to  do  ?  Insist  on  re- 
maining out  in  Africa  and  rejoin  the  Mission?  And 
work  under  Ann  ?  The  thought  of  the  altered  circum- 
stances repelled  her.  Who  would  care  now  if  she  were 
ill?  She  had  had  several  illnesses  and  many  fits  of 
malaise  —  and  tears  of  self-pity  now  ran  down  her 

cheeks.     And  how  good  and  uncomplaining here 

choking  sobs,  hiccups,  almost  a  loud  wailing  intervened 

— dear  John  had  been.     The  cups  of  broth  he  had 

brought  to  her  bedside,  the  little  meals  to  tempt  her 

appetite.  .  .  .  And  Roger?  .  .  .  The  equal  solicitude 

—  the  interest  he  had  shown,  even  in  her  whims ! 

***** 

The  realization  of  her  bereavement  kept  Callaway 
from  intruding  on  her  solitude,  even  by  a  message 
through  Halima.  This  was  a  mercy,  she  thought  — 
at  first  —  because  however  well-meaning,  he  struck  her 
fastidiousness  as  "  common,"  not  very  attractive  in 
appearance,  with  a  harsh  voice,  and  effluent  piety,  and 
bad  table  manners.  .  .  .  But  need  Halima  have  been 
quite  so  neglectful?  Halima  latterly  was  so  wrapped 
up  in  the  project  of  marrying  the  Goanese  cook  that 
she  unhesitatingly  neglected  her  mistress  and  avowed 
her  complete  readiness  to  enter  the  Roman  Church  if 
that  act  could  remove  Antonio  da  Silva  e  Andrade's 
last  scruple  of  reluctance  to  wed  with  a  Negress.  She 
spent  much  of  her  time  oiling  and  combing  her  fuzzy 
hair  into  a  European  coiffure,  and  did  not  hesitate  to 
"  borrow  "  details  of  Lucy's  scanty  wardrobe  for  her 
own  adornment.  When  she  came  with  Lucy's  meals 
into  the  hot  .  .  .  hot  .  .  .  hot  bedroom,  with  its 
dreadful  insect  swarms,  from  which  the  iron  bedstead, 
with  its  lowered  mosquito  curtain,  was  almost  the  only 
refuge,  she  —  Halima  —  bore  a  sulky  face.  She 
would  evidently  not  stay  with  Lucy  in  misfortune.  .  .  . 

One  way  and  another,  Lucy  was  fretting  and  worry- 


228      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

ing  herself  into  a  state  of  illness ;  afraid  to  go  out  or 
to  show  herself;  loathing  life  in  this  low-ceilinged, 
vermin-infested  bedroom,  hot  by  day,  stifling  at  night, 
as  she  lay  inside  the  mosquito  netting  in  the  blackest 
darkness,  shuddering  at  the  possibilities  beyond  the 
bed.  Rats  romped  and  squeaked  and  occasionally  fell 
from  the  rafters  into  the  sagging  mosquito  net;  scor- 
pions, no  doubt,  were  lurking  in  the  crevices  of  the 
floor-boards  to  sting  her  toes  if  she  stepped  out  of  the 
insufferably  hot  bed.  Cockroaches  alternated  their 
love-flights  from  the  window  with  frantic  and  wily  at- 
tempts to  get  under  the  curtain.  Mosquitoes,  all  the 
night  through,  kept  up  a  sonorous  diapason  of  un- 
broken humming,  indignant  at  being  denied  access  to 
her  body.  And  the  loneliness !  Halima  was  supposed 
to  sleep  on  the  landing  outside;  a  polite  supposition 
which  Lucy  was  unwilling  to  test,  lest  inquiry  should 
lead  to  a  defiant  withdrawal  from  her  service.  .  .  . 
Her  service!  Where  were  Halima's  wages  to  come 

from? 

***** 

It  was  ten  a.m. —  more  or  less.  Lucy  had  risen, 
washed  hurriedly,  and  hurriedly  put  on  the  only  clean 
cotton  dress  left  to  her.  (She  really  must  go  out  one 
day  and  buy  some  things  for  the  voyage  —  only  where 
was  the  money?)  The  door  was  thrown  open  by  an 
excited,  more  amiable  Halima,  who  shouted  "  Yupo 
Bibi  Balozi!  Anakuita!" 

A  pleasant,  high-bred  voice  explained: 
"  I  am  looking  for  Mrs.  Baines.     Is  she  in  here?  " 
Lucy  scrambled  off  the  bed  from  under  the  mosquito 
curtain  and  stood  before  Lady  Dewburn,  the  Consul- 
General's  wife.  .  .  . 

Broken  apologies  .  .  .  explanations  — "  Bed  only 
place  where  you  could  be  tolerably  free  from  mos- 
quitoes. ..." 

Lady    Dewburn    is    a    handsome    shrewd-looking 


THE  RETURN  TO  UNGUJA  229 

woman  of  middle  age.  She  wears  a  single  eyeglass  at 
times,  for  greater  precision  of  sight,  and  because  she  is 
the  daughter  of  a  permanent  official.  But  though  she 
inspires  a  certain  awe,  she  is  in  reality  a  kind  creature, 
irresistibly  impelled  to  interfere  —  she  hopes  for  the 
best  —  in  other  people's  affairs,  especially  out  here. 
Her  children  are  either  out  in  the  world  or  at  school  in 
England,  and  she  is  exceedingly  bored  on  this  fever- 
ishly tropical,  gloriously  squalid  island.  The  day  be- 
fore she  had  heard  all  about  Lucy  from  Captain  Bren- 
tham.  .  .  . 

Lady  Dewburn:  "My  poor  child!  Please  over- 
look all  formalities  and  come  away  with  me,  just  as 
you  are.  Your  woman  here  —  if  you  can  trust  her  — 
shall  pack  up  what  you  have  —  you  can't  have  much, 
I  should  think,  after  that  appalling  journey  to  the 
coast.  .  .  .  Come  away  with  me.  .  .  .  Why,  you  must 
have  hardly  any  clothes  to  wear!  I  don't  wonder 
you  stop  in  bed !  We've  got  lots  of  spare  rooms  —  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  Sir  Godfrey  and  I  are  alone  just 
now.  Come  and  stay  with  us  till  you  can  look  round 
and  make  your  plans.  It  seems  to  me  as  though  I 
ought  to  put  you  to  bed  for  a  week  to  begin  with.  .  .  ." 

Lucy's  acceptance  of  this  Fairy  Godmother  proposal 
dissolved  from  words  into  gulping  sobs  and  convulsive 
eye-dabbings  and  nose-blowing.  But  she  was  practi- 
cal enough  to  find  her  sola  topi  and  white  umbrella,  to 
make  her  cotton  dress  look  a  little  tidier,  and  gasp  a 
few  directions  in  Swahili  to  the  over-awed  Halima. 
Halima  was  wearing  Lucy's  evening  "  fichu  "  all  the 
time  and  was  uneasily  conscious  of  having  blundered 
into  felony  through  ill-timed  contempt  for  her  lady. 

Lucy  observed  none  of  this,  but  followed  Lady 
Dewburn's  fastidious  steps  down  the  stairs  of  palm 
planks  out  into  the  yard,  where  Mr.  Callaway  —  really 
a  very  decent  sort,  who  after  all  had  done  his  best  for 
Lucy  —  was  awaiting  them.  He  was  personally  grati- 


23o      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

fied  and  relieved  in  his  mind  that  the  first  lady  in  Un- 
guja  should  have  taken  his  forlorn  little  client  under 
her  wing.  After  picking  their  way  with  skirts  lifted 
high  through  narrow  unsavoury  lanes  between  high 
blank  houses,  they  at  last  reached  Unguja's  one  broad 
highway.  Here  was  a  handsomely  appointed  carriage, 
and  in  it  they  rolled  away  to  the  Agency. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

LUCY'S    SECOND    MARRIAGE 

From  Sir  Godfrey  Dewburn,  K.C.I.E.,  to -Mr.  Bennet 
Molyneux,  African  Department,  Foreign  Office. 

H.M.  Agency  and  Consulate-General, 
Unguja, 

March  15,  1889. 

DEAR  MOLYNEUX, — 
In  the  matter  of  Brentham,  I  think  a  private 
letter  to  you  might  meet  the  case  better  than  an  ex- 
change of  cables  or  an  official  dispatch. 

I  quite  understand  your  Department  is  annoyed  at 
the  questions  put  in  Parliament  last  month  after  the 
news  about  the  deaths  at  the  Mission  station  at  Han- 
godi.  But  I  cannot  help,  thinking  the  Department  is 
disposed  to  be  too  hard  on  Brentham,  as  though  it 
were  prejudiced  from  some  other  quarter  than  me.  I 
admit  when  I  first  came  out  here  I  jibbed  a  little  at  his 
cocksureness,  his  assumption  that  no  one  knew  any- 
thing about  Ungujan  affairs  to  compare  with  his  own 
knowledge;  and  it  seemed  to  me  he  made  rather  a 
parade  about  the  number  of  languages  he  had  acquired, 
which  contrasted  unfavourably  with  my  acquaintance 
—  then  —  with  only  three  ( I  have  tried  since  to  learn 
Swahili).  And  so  on  and  so  on.  I  moved  easier  and 
got  my  bearings  better  when  I  had  sent  him  over  to 
his  proper  sphere,  the  mainland.  I  also  thought  his 
contempt  for  the  Bazzards  a  little  too  marked,  though 
I  must  admit  subsequently  my  wife  and  I  have  found 
that  a  little  of  Mrs.  B.  goes  a  long  way.  But  I  hate 
writing  disagreeable  things  about  anybody  —  a  climate 

231 


232      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

like  this  excuses  hair-dye,  face-powder,  irritability  and 
even  a  moderate  degree  of  illicit  love  (don't  treat  this 
as  official!)  .  .  .  But  about  Brentham :  if  his  mission 
to  the  missionaries  —  telling  them  to  clear  out  before 
the  Arab  danger  —  Tvas  a  failure,  in  that  in  most  places 
there  was  no  danger,  your  apprehensions  and  my  in- 
structions were  to  blame  for  starting  Brentham  off  on 
his  wild-goose  chase.  The  missionaries  in  Usagara 
seem  to  cut  up  rough  because  they  weren't  attacked, 
were  "  quittes  pour  la  peur."  But  that  was  hardly 
Brentham's  fault. 

The  Hangodi  business  is  a  different  matter.  There 
is  little  doubt  in  my  mind  that  B.  was  a  little  spoony 
on  Mrs.  Baines  —  They  had  travelled  out  together, 
and  it  seems  she  comes  from  near  his  part  of  the  world 
in  Berkshire-Hampshire  —  Jolly  district,  near  the 
Carnarvons  and  the  Silchesters. —  Ever  go  there  to 
shoot?  But  Mrs.  Baines  had  been  ill  from  one  of  these 
confinements  that  Missionary  ladies  —  married,  of 
course  —  have  so  regularly,  and  her  husband  seems 
really  to  have  wished  his  wife  to  go  away  with  Bren- 
tham. To  make  it  all  right  and  proper  he  packed  off 
at  the  same  time  the  other  woman  at  their  station,  a 
strong-minded  female  named  Jamblin.  (She  figures 
very  much  in  the  dispatches  I  sent  home  last  mail.) 
Well :  according  to  Brentham,  this  Jamblin  woman, 
when  they  had  done  a  few  marches  and  stopped  at  an- 
other Mission  station,  insisted,  positively  insisted  on 
going  back  to  Hangodi,  and  equally  insisted  on  his 
taking  Mrs.  Baines  to  the  coast.  He  oughtn't  to  have 
agreed.  That's  where  he  was  weak.  He  ought  to 
have  returned  to  Hangodi  and  helped  to  beat  off  the 
attack  —  if  it  came,  as  it  did  —  and  then  have  refused 
to  take  the  ladies  away  unless  the  men  came  too.  In- 
stead of  that,  Brentham,  having  found  some  mission- 
aries of  whom  he  was  in  search,  hung  about  their  place 


LUCY'S  SECOND  MARRIAGE  233 

until  the  news  of  the  attack  on  Hangodi  and  the  death 
of  Mrs.  Baines's  husband  reached  him.  After  that  he 
made  for  the  coast  by  the  northern  route,  the  only  one 
open  to  him  at  that  time  without  fighting.  Even 
on  this  route  they  had  some  most  extraordinary 
adventures  and  spent  a  devil  of  a  time  before  they 
got  back  to  civilization  —  as  we  call  ourselves  by 
contrast. 

The  general  opinion  among  the  missionaries,  I  know, 
is  unfavourable  to  Mrs.  Baines,  and  in  consequence  to 
Brentham.  But  Brentham  swears  to  me  on  his  honour 
—  and  I  believe  him  —  there  was  nothing  "  wrong  " 
between  them.  Jennie  —  my  wife  —  says  he's  as 
straight  as  a  die ;  though  never  having  seen  a  "  die,"  I 
can't  say.  At  any  rate,  Jennie,  on  whose  judgment  I 
always  rely,  has  taken  a  great  liking  to  Brentham.  So 
she  has  also  to  the  young  party  with  whom  he  has 
become  involved,  this  Mrs.  John  Baines.  The  poor 
girl  —  she  doesn't  look  her  age  —  26  —  was  stranded 
here  at  their  Mission  Depot,  and  Jennie,  after  hearing 
about  her,  went  over  in  her  impulsive  way  and  brought 
her  to  the  Agency.  This  has  put  a  stopper  on  local 
gossip,  which  has  thus  been  deprived  of  a  rare  morsel 
that  would  otherwise  have  acted  as  a  real  tonic  on  a 
fever-stricken  community.  Now  Jennie  says  that  al- 
though there's  never  been  anything  between  them  but 
what  was  right  and  proper,  they  ought  to  marry  as 
soon  as  six  months  is  up  from  the  death  of  the  first 
husband  —  which  we  presume  took  place  on  October 
29th,  from  the  accounts  of  that  masterful  person  who 
now  calls  herself  Ann  Anderson.  Jennie  had  but  to 
make  the  suggestion  and  they  both  consented,  so  the 
civil  marriage  —  the  only  legal  one  here  —  is  fixed  for 
March  31.  Whether  Archdeacon  Gravening  will  con- 
sent to  marry  them  at  the  Cathedral  in  addition,  I  can- 
not say.  He  is  thinking  it  over.  The  matter  has  been 


234     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

speeded  up  by  your  intimation  that  the  P.O.  intends  to 
recall  Brentham.  If  he  went  back  and  didn't  marry 
her,  things  would  go  hardly  with  Mrs.  Baines.  (I 
really  have  taken  a  liking  to  her,  and  I  could  imagine 
when  she  gets  to  a  good  climate  she  might  be  quite 
pretty.  She  is  very  quiet,  and  in  a  quiet  way  is  rather 
entertaining  in  her  accounts  of  what  they  went  through 
in  their  wild  journey  to  the  coast.) 

Well :  when  the  wedding  is  over,  I  propose  breaking 
to  him  the  P.O.  instructions  to  return  and  give  an  ac- 
count of  himself.  I  must  give  him  just  enough  time 
to  go  over  to  the  mainland  and  try  to  settle  things  at 
his  Consulate  there.  The  Spencer  Bazzards  —  who 
have  a  down  on  him  —  report  that  an  utter  muddle 
followed  his  departure  for  the  interior  last  September, 
and  accuse  his  Indian  clerk  of  embezzling  Consular 
funds,  and,  worse  still,  of  selling  the  office  cipher  code 
to  the  Germans.  This,  if  true,  is  a  confounded  nui- 
sance, as  it  will  oblige  us  to  make  changes  all  round. 
Fortunately  it  is  only  Cipher  Q. 

I  suppose  you  know  Captain  Wissmann  has  arrived 
at  Medina  at  the  head  of  a  force  of  over  a  thousand 
picked  men  to  fight  the  Arabs  to  a  finish?  Other  Ger- 
man officers  have  met  him  there  with  further  con- 
tingents —  Zulus  and  Makua.  Wissmann's  people  are 
mainly  Sudanese.  I  suppose  we  have  done  right  in 
enabling  him  to  raise  this  force  on  what  is  practically 
British  territory — -British  or  Portuguese?  I  like 
Wissmann  personally.  After  all  —  as  Brentham  says 
—  if  we  hadn't  the  pluck  to  take  all  East  Africa  for 
ourselves  at  the  time  we  were  first  challenged  by  Bis- 
marck, it  is  better  that  the  German  share  should  be 
properly  controlled  and  not  fall  back  into  a  state  of 
anarchy  and  slave-raiding.  But,  of  course,  what  ties 
our  hands  in  all  these  matters  is  the  intense  desire  of 
France  to  raise  the  Egyptian  question  to  our  disadvan- 
tage.—  Therefore,  don't  think  I  am  girding  at  the 


LUCY'S  SECOND  MARRIAGE  235 

Office  for  irresolution.     The  French  here  make  my  life 
a  burden  to  me  with  their  intrigues.  .  .  . 

***** 

Yours  sincerely, 

GODFREY  DEWBURN. 

From  Lucy  Brentham  to  Mrs.  Albert  Josling,  Church 
Farm,  Aldermaston. 

Mbweni, 

Unguja, 
April  2,  1889. 
DARLING  MOTHER, — 

I  expect  you  got  my  letter  written  early  in  January 
after  I  had  got  back  to  Unguja.  The  news  must  have 
come  to  you  as  an  awful  shock.  And  what  it  has  been 
to  Mrs.  Baines  I  dare  not  think.  I  expect  I  shall  get 
some  sort  of  answer  from  you  in  a  day  or  two  when  the 
mail  comes  in.  But  as  there  is  a  steamer  going  to- 
morrow I  dash  off  this  letter  to  give  you  other  news : 
good  news  this  time,  dearest. 

I  was  married  on  March  3ist  last  to  Captain  Roger 
Brentham,  the  Consul  for  the  Mainland.  You  know 
all  about  him  from  my  letters.  It  is  true  it  is  only  a 
little  more  than  six  months  since  poor  John  died,  and 
some  people  will  think  it  much  too  soon  afterwards 
to  marry  again,  but  you  and  Father  will  understand. 
Roger  is  shortly  going  home. —  Think  of  it,  darling 
mother!  We  are  going  —  or  should  one  say,  "  we  are 
coming"?  —  HOME.  I  put  it  in  capitals.  He  has 
wanted  to  marry  me  ever  since  we  knew  of  John's 
death.  We  both  feel  sure  John  would  think  it  the 
wisest  thing  to  do,  even  Ann  Jamblin  does.  Well, 
Roger  being  called  back  by  the  Foreign  Office,  he  could 
hardly  leave  me  behind  here  and  if  he  hadn't  asked  me 
to  marry  him  I  couldn't  have  stopped  here  all  by  my- 
self, unless  I  had  joined  some  missionary  society.  And 


236      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

that  I  didn't  feel  inclined  to  do.  I  don't  think  I'm 
suited  for  the  work.  But  don't  think  I  want  to  run 
down  the  Missionaries.  Far  from  it,  after  all  I've 
seen.  Mission  work  quite  changed  John.  It  made 
him  so  good  and  unselfish.  And  although  I've  many 
reasons  for  feeling  sore  and  angry  about  Ann  Jamblin 
that  was. — •  She  isn't  dead,  but  she's  married  in  a  sort 
of  a  way  to  that  Ebenezer  Anderson  of  our  Mission. — 
Well,  even  Ann  is  twice  the  woman  she  was  in  old  days 
at  Tilehurst.  They  call  her  here  —  at  least,  the  local 
paper  does  —  It's  run  by  an  Eurasian  —  I'll  tell  you 
some  day  what  Eurasian  means  .  .  .  they  call  her 
"  The  Heroine  of  Hangodi."  I  believe  somebody  is 
going  to  write  about  her  in  the  English  papers;  and 
the  German  commander  on  the  mainland,  Captain 
Wissmann  —  has  sent  her  his  compliments,  and  said  he 
can  always  admire  a  brave  woman  no  matter  what  her 
nationality.  Isn't  it  all  funny  when  we  think  of  what 
she  was  like  at  school  and  how  greedy  she  used  to  be 
at  the  prayer-meetings?  There  is  a  missionary  couple 
here  —  I've  mentioned  them  in  my  other  letters,  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Stott.  You  can't  think  how  good  they've 
been  to  me.  I've  got  lots  and  lots  and  lots  to  tell  you 
when  we  meet.  But  I  must  be  quick  and  finish  this 
letter. 

Well:  I  was  married  to  my  darling  Roger  last 
Wednesday,  and  if  it  wasn't  every  now  and  then  that 
I  think  about  poor  John  I  should  be  the  happiest 
woman  alive.  Mother,  I've  always  loved  him  since 
that  first  morning  we  met  on  the  steamer  and  he 
pointed  out  the  Isle  of  Wight,  and  then  took  such  care 
of  me  all  through  the  voyage.  And  he  says  he  fell  in 
love  with  me  the  same  time.  Isn't  that  wonderful 
when  you  think  of  all  the  great  ladies  he  has  seen,  many 
of  them  I'm  sure  in  love  with  him.  When  I  asked  him 
why,  he  just  kissed  me  and  said  it  was  my  violet  eyes 
and  my  look  of  utter  helplessness.  But  I  feel  it  is  too 


LUCY'S  SECOND  MARRIAGE  237 

sacred  to  talk  or  write  about.  I  was  always  a  true  wife 
to  poor  John.  People  may  think  and  say  what  they 
like.  There  is  a  horrid  old  cat  here  on  the  Mainland, 
who  also  travelled  out  with  me.  I'm  sure  she  says  and 
writes  horrid  things  about  me.  It's  only  jealousy. 
But  even  now,  Mother,  I  haven't  told  you  almost  the 
most  wonderful  thing  of  all!  I  did  just  say  in  my  last 
letter  how  I'd  gone  to  stay  with  the  wife  of  the  Consul- 
General.  It  happened  this  way.  When  we  first 
landed  here  from  one  of  those  dreadful  Arab  sailing- 
boats  that  are  full  of  what  you  will  call  B  flats  but 
what  I  think  —  and  so  does  Roger  —  it  is  much  more 
sensible  to  call  "  bugs "  straight  out  —  when  we 
landed  Roger  said,  "  You'd  better  go  to  Mr.  Callaway 
and  stay  there  first  till  I  can  find  out  what  it's  best  to 
do  for  you."  So  there  I  went,  and  I  was  just  miser- 
able. I  didn't  like  to  tell  you  how  much  at  the  time 
for  fear  of  its  upsetting  you.  I  really  felt  almost  like 
committing  suicide,  only  I  should  never  do  anything  so 
wicked.  But  there  I  lay,  inside  my  mosquito  curtain  in 
a  room  like  a  Turkish  bath,  crying,  crying  to  myself 
about  poor  John  and  thinking  I  should  never  see  Roger 
again,  and  what  Mrs.  Baines  would  say  when  I  came 
back  all  alone ;  when  in  walked  Lady  Dewburn,  the  wife 
of  the  Consul-General  — "  my  boss  " —  as  Roger  calls 
him.  She  would  have  it  that  I  was  to  go  away  with 
her  then  and  there.  Mother,  I'd  hardly  any  clothes 
after  that  dreadful  journey;  that  was  one  reason  I  felt 
ashamed  to  go  out.  Well,  she  put  me  in  a  lovely  cool 
bedroom  at  the  top  of  her  house. —  It  has  a  flat  roof 
and  I  used  so  to  enjoy  walking  out  of  my  room  and 
looking  at  the  sea  and  the  natives  down  below  and  the 
ships  and  palms.  She  had  my  meals  sent  up  to  me  and 
often  came  up  herself  to  inquire,  and  for  a  week  she 
got  Indian  tailors  to  cut  out  and  sew  clothes  for  me  to 
wear.  When  they  were  ready  I  had  got  quite  well 
again,  and  then  she  brought  me  down  and  introduced 


238     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

me  to  her  husband,  who  is  the  great  man  of  this  place. 
He  used  rather  to  make  fun  of  me,  tease  me  you  know, 
but  he  was  kind  under  it  all.  Mother,  if  I'd  been  their 
ozvn  daughter  they  couldn't  have  treated  me  kinder. 
She  wouldn't  let  me  thank  her,  said  I  was  a  distressed 
British  subject  and  it  was  her  duty.  And  after  I'd 
been  staying  with  them  about  six  weeks  and  was  be- 
ginning to  say  I  ought  to  earn  my  living  or  else  go 
home,  she  said,  wouldn't  you  as  an  alternative  like  to 
marry  Roger  Brentham  ?  And  I  said,  He'd  never  ask 
me  and  if  he  did  I  should  only  spoil  his  career.  And 
she  said,  Nonsense.  And  the  next  day,  when  they  had 
both  gone  out  driving,  Roger  came  to  the  room  where 
I  was  working  with  Halima  (who,  strange  to  say,  has 
married  his  cook!)  and  asked  me  to  be  his  wife.  How 
could  I  say  anything  but  "  yes  "  ?  I  know  now  I 
should  have  died  of  consumption  or  something  if  he 
hadn't.  But  of  course  I  said  — "  It  can't  be  till  poor 
John  has  been  dead  a  year."  Then  that  evening  when  I 
told  Lady  Dewburn,  she  said,  "  Nonsense !  I  can  see 
no  reason  why  it  shouldn't  be  at  the  end  of  March. 
Then  if  Captain  Brentham  has  to  go  home  you  can 
return  with  him."  So,  of  course,  I  gave  in. 

I'm  afraid  it'll  make  lots  of  people  angry,  especially 
Mrs.  Baines.  How  can  we  break  it  to  her? 

There  are  a  thousand  other  things  I  can  tell  you,  but 
if  I  don't  finish  this  letter  now  I  shan't  be  in  time  to 
put  it  in  the  Agency  mail-bag,  which  I  always  think  is 
so  much  safer  than  the  ordinary  post,  and  I  don't  have 
to  stamp  it. 

So  in  a  few  more  weeks  darling  mother  you  will  meet 
again 

Your  own 

LUCY. 

P.S.  Love  to  father  and  the  dear  girls.  Do  see 
what  you  can  do  with  Mrs.  Baines.  I  feel  so  sorry  for 
her,  and  I  should  so  like  to  tell  her  about  John. 


LUCY'S  SECOND  MARRIAGE  239 

Things  might  have  been  so  different  if  only  my  little 
baby  had  lived,  John  felt  it  dreadfully. 

Private  and  Confidential. 

H.M.  Agency  and  Consulate-General, 

Unguja, 

April  2. 
DEAR  BAZZARD, — 

I  take  advantage  of  a  British  steamer  which  is 
crossing  to-day  to  Medina  to  send  you  this  hurried 
note. 

Your  colleague,  Captain  Brentham,  was  married  on 
March  31  to  Mrs.  John  Baines,  the  widow  of  the  poor 
fellow  who  was  killed  at  Hangodi.  Brentham  will 
probably  be  returning  to  England  very  shortly  on 
leave  of  absence  (I  understood  from  you  you  were 
willing  to  postpone  your  leave  for  a  few  months). 
Before  he  goes  I  have  asked  him  to  co-operate  with  you 
in  getting  affairs  at  the  Medina  Consulate  settled  up 
satisfactorily,  so  that  you  may  formally  take  over  from 
him  and  be  Acting  Consul  there  till  there  are  further 
developments.  I  am  very  grateful  to  you  and  Mrs. 
Bazzard  for  stepping  into  the  breach  caused  by  these 
confounded  disturbances  which  have  not  only  occurred 
in  the  German  hinterland  but  are  now  beginning  in 
ours  —  so  we  mustn't  boast  too  soon ! 

Brentham  had  to  leave,  as  you  know,  very  hurriedly 
last  September,  and  if  the  Arabs  had  succeeded  in 
taking  the  town  matters  would  have  been  ever  so  much 
worse  than  they  are.  He  says  if  there  turns  out  really 
to  be  any  deficit  in  the  cash  due  to  the  embezzlement 
of  the  Indian  clerk  —  if  he  did  embezzle  —  but  what 
has  become  of  him?  Was  he  killed?  —  he  is  willing 
to  make  it  good  out  of  his  own  pocket.  (Rather  hard 
on  him  as  he  could  not  help  leaving  this  man  in  charge ; 
but  I  may  come  in  like  a  benevolent  arbiter  if  the  af- 
fair is  serious. )  The  loss  or  disappearance  of  the  office 


240     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

cipher  is  a  serious  business  —  very  — .  I  don't  see 
what  good  it  would  be  retrieving  it  from  the  Germans, 
as,  if  they  have  had  it  at  all  in  their  possession,  they 
have  probably  derived  from  it  all  the  information  they 
want! 

Whilst  Brentham  is  over  at  Medina  I  want  him  to 
have  an  interview  with  the  German  commandant,  Cap- 
tain Wissmann,  as  he  can  convey  to  him  a  message 
from  me. 

I  hope  Mrs.  Bazzard  continues  well?  She  has 
certainly  shown  she  can  stand  the  climate.  But  we 
mustn't  try  her  too  far. 

Sincerely  yours  .  .  . 

GODFREY  DEWBURN. 

When  this  letter  reached  Spencer  Bazzard  he  took  it 
promptly  to  his  wife,  who  was  seated  before  her  dress- 
ing-table rubbing  a  little  of  the  "  hair-restorer  "  into 
the  very  roots  of  her  hair,  which  had  an  exasperating 
way  of  not  starting  gold  from  the  skin-level.  She 
said,  keeping  her  eyes  fixed  on  the  glass,  "  Read  it 
aloud."  He  did  so.  "  Hooray,"  she  exclaimed,  with 
ordered  joy  so  as  not  to  interfere  with  the  delicate 
operation  —  they  were  going  out  to  dine  that  night 
with  a  German  functionary  — "  Hooray !  That  means 
he's  scuppered.  He's  going  home,  you  bet,  rather  off 
colour.  They've  made  him  marry  her  to  placate  the 
missionaries.  But  he'll  never  bother  us  again  out  here. 
Well,  we'll  be  civil  to  him  in  the  clearing  up." 

From  Captain  Roger  Brentham  to  Lady  Silchester. 

Mbweni,  Unguja, 

April  2,  1889. 
DEAR  SIBYL, — 

I  don't  think  you  have  any  realization  of  what  I've 
been  through  lately  or  you'd  have  written  to  inquire, 


LUCY'S  SECOND  MARRIAGE  241 

or  condole,  or  encourage.  I've  had  a  regular  "  gaffe  " 
—  tell  you  more  about  it  by  and  bye.  And  a  wonder- 
ful journey  in  the  interior  worthy  of  a  Royal  Geo- 
graphical Society's  medal  —  tell  you  more  about  that 
too  some  day  —  and  —  don't  start  —  I've  got  mar- 
ried! 

You  always  predicted  I  should  marry  a  "  mission- 
aryess."  Well:  I've  done  so.  Yes,  you  were  right, 
true  Sibyl  that  you  are.  I've  married  the  dear  little 
girl  —  for  so  she  seems  to  me  —  whom  I  escorted  out 
to  Unguja  three  years  ago  and  whom  I  married  myself 
to  her  young  missionary  husband,  who  was  going  to  a 
station  in  the  interior  called  Hangodi.  There  followed 
a  tragic  time.  I  dare  say  the  newspapers  will  have 
told  you  all  about  it.  She  and  I  got  locked  up,  so  to 
speak,  in  the  far  interior  and  I  never  thought  she,  at 
any  rate,  would  get  to  the  coast  alive. 

Well :  I  felt  after  all  we'd  gone  through  together 
there  was  only  one  thing  —  the  right  thing  —  to  do, 
being  also  very  much  in  love  with  her.  Lady  Dewburn 
(you  know  whom  I  mean)  thought  precisely  the  same; 
and  Lady  Dewburn,  let  me  say,  is  about  the  best  woman 
I  know.  I  shall  never  forget  what  she  did  for  my  poor 
Lucy.  Dewburn  performed  the  civil  ceremony  for  us 
and  gave  a  small  and  quiet  wedding  breakfast  after  the 
"  small  and  quiet  "  wedding  at  the  Cathedral.  My  old 
friend  Gravening  ("the  Venble.  Archdeacon'')  was 
awfully  nice  about  the  whole  thing  .  .  .  fully  approved 
of  my  marrying  Lucy,  under  all  the  sad  circumstances, 
and  said  he'd  fix  up  the  religious  part.  Because  you 
know  what  women  are.  They  never  think  they've 
been  properly  married  unless  it's  in  a  Church  —  or  if 
they  do,  their  mothers  don't. 

I  know  I've  got  some  rough  places  to  get  over  before 
I  can  settle  down  to  work  and  go  full  steam  ahead,  but 
I  look  to  you  and  other  true  friends,  real  pals  —  to  pull 
me  through.  The  P.O.  seems  to  have  a  down  on  me 


242      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

and  a  proportion  of  the  Mission  World  likewise.  But 
when  they  hear  the  whole  story  they  will  see  I  was  sim- 
ply dogged  with  misfortune  and  did  all  I  could  possibly 
have  done.  Unfortunately  while  I  was  away  in  the 
interior  everything  went  to  pieces  at  my  Consulate,  and 
two  awful  bounders  —  the  Bazzards,  more  about  them 
when  we  meet  —  are  exploiting  it  to  the  utmost. 

I  am  going  back  to  the  mainland  after  a  week's  holi- 
day to  get  things  put  right  at  the  Consulate.  Hope  I 
shan't  take  Bazzard  by  the  throat,  or  lose  my  temper 
with  his  Bayswater  wife.  I  simply  mustn't.  Well: 
when  I  have  done  all  that  and  left  the  Bazzards  prop- 
erly installed  I  take  the  next  steamer  back  with  Lucy. 
Two  years,  nearly,  have  I  been  out  here,  and  six 
months'  leave  on  full  pay  is  due  to  me.  I  am  going 
home  nominally  to  report.  Wonder  whether  they  will 
send  me  back  ?  In  any  case  I  look  to  you,  dear  Cousin 
and  friend,  to  give  me  a  helping  hand  —  not  so  much 
about  Consular  matters  —  I  feel  there  if  common  jus- 
tice is  dealt  out  I  can  stand  on  my  own  —  but  as  re- 
gards little  Lucy.  Her  father's  status  and  that  of  my 
father  are  not  very  different,  when  you  come  to  look 
at  it,  except  that  Josling  is  probably  a  much  more  use- 
ful member  of  the  community.  But  she  may  want  a 
helping  hand  when  we  come  home,  if  we  are  asked  out 
and  about.  Of  course,  with  her  extraordinary  African 
experience  behind  her  she  will  be  quite  as  interesting 
to  meet  as  a  Lady  Baker,  a  Miss  Gordon  Cumming,  or 
Isabella  Bird 

I've  written  a  short  note  to  good  old  Maud  and  a  still 
shorter  one  to  the  Pater.  Rather  rough  on  a  man 
after  only  two  days  of  honeymoon  to  have  to  sit  down 
and  compose  all  these  epistles,  even  though  it  is  in  a 
tropical  paradise  like  Mbweni  —  but  with  the  ther- 
mometer at  ninety  something  in  the  shade.  I  am  sure 
Maud  will  take  to  Lucy;  not  so  sure  about  you.  You 
have  become  so  grand.  As  to  the  Pater,  he'll  hardly 


LUCY'S  SECOND  MARRIAGE  243 

pay  much  attention  to  us  unless  we  could  consent  to  be 
buried  at  Silchester  and  excavated  by  him!  Maud 
wrote  some  time  ago  to  say  his  neglect  of  his  Church 
work  for  excavation  of  Roman  sites  was  becoming  such 
a  scandal  that  they'd  had  to  engage  a  curate  for  Far- 
leigh. 

And  that  the  curate  hadn't  been  there  two  months 
before  he  had  proposed  to  her,  been  refused,  and  then 
settled  down  to  a  "  filial  "  manner. 

How  is  Silchester?  It's  getting  on  for  a  year  since 
I  had  a  letter  from  you;  but  I  saw  in  a  recent  news- 
paper he'd  been  down  with  influenza  but  was  "  making 
good  progress."  That  always  reads  ominously. 

Look  out  for  me  sometime  in  May.  I  hope  I  shall 
be  as  welcome  as  the  flowers  of  that  same.  I'm  bring- 
ing you  home  some  leopard  skins  and  an  African  rattle 
for  Clitheroe.  So  long! 

ROGER. 

A  week  after  these  letters  were  put  in  the  Consular 
mail-bag,  Roger  had  packed  up  and  was  waiting  for  a 
gun-boat  to  convey  him  across  to  the  mainland  — 
where  he  was  to  have  an  important  interview  with 
Captain  Wissmann,  fresh  from  a  great  victory  over 
the  Arabs.  Sir  Godfrey,  taking  leave  of  him,  said: 
"  Looked  at  the  Reuters  this  morning?  " 

Roger:    "No!     What's  up?" 

Sir  Godfrey:  "  Your  friend  Lord  Silchester  is 
dead." 

"  Phew !  "  said  Roger,  or  as  near  as  he  could  get 
to  that  conventional  exclamation  of  surprise  and  specu- 
lation as  to  what  might  have  been.  .  .  . 


CHAPTER  XV 

IN    ENGLAND 

CAPTAIN  and  Mrs.  Brentham  arrived  in  London 
from  East  Africa  at  the  end  of  May,  1889.  You 
must  picture  Brentham  with  a  reserve  of  savings  of 
about  five  hundred  pounds  lying  to  his  credit  at  Cocks's, 
and  a  salary  at  the  rate  of  seven  hundred  a  year  which 
will  go  on  till  some  time  in  October.  After  much  con- 
sideration and  discussion  during  the  voyage  they  have 
taken  a  furnished  flat  on  the  eighth  floor  of  Hankey's 
Mansions,  St.  James's  Park,  as  having  a  better  ad- 
dress — "  being  close  to  the  Government  offices  and  the 
clubs,  don't  you  know,  and  of  course  if  you  have  the 
lift  going  night  and  day  it  don't  matter  whether  you're 
on  the  first  or  the  eighth  floor,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
view."  Lucy  had  timidly  suggested  Pardew's  Family 
Hotel  in  Great  Ormond  Street  as  being  very  cheap  for 
relations  of  Aunt  Ellen,  but  Roger  with  that  wistful 
snobbishness  of  his  class  decided  it  would  be  rather  a 
come-down  to  hail  from  the  West  Central  part  of  Lon- 
don when  you  were  wishing  to  impress  the  Foreign 
Office  favourably;  so  Hankey's  it  was,  with  lots  of 
sunlight,  superb  views  over  the  Park  and  the  barrack 
ground  with  its  military  challenges  and  cries. 

Mr.  Molyneux's  room  at  the  Foreign  Office. 

"  Ah,  Brentham !  Thought  you'd  soon  be  turning 
up.  Dewburn's  been  writing  to  me  about  you.  .  .  . 
Have  a  cigar?  There  are  the  matches.  Well.  Hor- 
rid thing  to  say,  when  a  man's  only  just  arrived,  but 
you've  stirred  up  a  reg'lar  hornet's  nest  among  the 
unco'  guid.  This  confounded  Nonconformist  Con- 

244 


IN  ENGLAND  245 

science  that  Stead's  invented  or  created.  There's  an 
obvious  reference  to  you  in  the  last  Review  of  Reviews 
and  Labby's  put  a  very  caustic  article  in  last  week's 
Truth,  trying  to  get  at  the  Government's  East  African 
policy  through  you.  All  this  has  mightily  upset  the 
Old  Man 

Roger  endeavours  to  give  a  lucid  and  not  too  lengthy 
account  of  the  whole  sequence  of  events  which  led  up 
to  his  marriage  at  Ungnja;  expresses  the  most  justly- 
felt  wrath  against  the  mosquitoes  of  the  Press;  offers 
to  horsewhip  them  or  have  them  up  before  a  court  of 
law.  .  .  . 

Molyneux:  "  My  dear  fellow,  what  are  you  talking 
about?  You'd  simply  do  for  yourself  and  have  to  quit 
the  career.  First  place,  horsewhipping's  out  of  date 
—  dam'  low,  in  any  case  —  in  the  second,  there's  noth- 
ing libellous  in  what  they've  written  —  only  general 
application,  don't  you  know.  If  you  took  any  action 
on  it  you'd  just  dot  the  i's  and  cross  the  £'s  and  get 
laughed  at.  And  as  to  what  they  say  in  Parliament, 
can't  call  them  into  court  over  that.  No.  Best  leave 
it  alone.  Most  unfortunate.  Dare  say  not  a  bit  your 
fault.  Still  I  think  you  might  have  been  a  trifle  more 
prudent,  not  —  so  to  speak  —  have  run  your  head  into 
the  noose.  Quite  agree  with  Dewburn  you've  done  the 
right  thing  in  marrying  her.  .  .  . 

"  Well :  so  much  for  that.  Now  how  about  this 
missing  cipher?  Not  sure  that  don't  upset  us  a  bit 
more  than  your  carryings-on  with  missionary 
ladies.  .  .  ." 

Roger:  "  But  I  didn't  carry  on  —  I  —  I  —  really 
must  protest  against  these  assumptions " 

Molyneux:  "All  right.  Keep  your  hair  on.  ... 
Don't  get  into  a  wax.  .  .  .  I'm  only  talkin'  for  your 
own  good.  .  .  .  But  tell  us  about  this  cipher." 

Roger  (still  with  an  angry  flush):  "What  can  I 
rell  ?  I  arrive  at  Medina  and  am  told  all  in  a  hurry  to 


246      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

re-organize  the  Consulate  there.  There  was  no  one 
but  an  Indian  clerk  in  charge.  I  simply  take  him  over. 
I  put  my  cipher  in  the  safe,  but  I  had  to  leave  the  key 
with  the  clerk  when  at  very  short  notice  I  started  for 
up-country  to  warn  these  confounded  missionaries. 

.  .  Wish  to  God  I'd  paid  no  heed  to  your  instruc- 
tions "  ("I  say,  old  chap,  draw  it  mild  .  .  .  and  mind 
what  you're  doin'  with  that  cigar-ash."  Roger  strides 
to  the  fireplace  and  throws  away  the  cigar  into  it.) 
"  I  wish  to  God,"  he  continues,  "  I'd  left  'em  alone  to 
stand  the  racket  if  the  Arabs  did  come.  However, 
what  I  mean  to  say  is,  I  only  set  out  to  do  what  I  was 
told  to  do  and  couldn't  foresee  how  long  it  would  take. 
I  didn't  get  back  to  my  Consulate  till  last  April.  How 
can  I  tell  what  happened  to  the  clerk  or  the  cipher  or 
the  money?  I  paid  up  the  deficit.  .  .  .  How  do  I 
know  what  those  Bazzards  were  up  to?  Mrs.  Baz- 
zard " 

Molyneux  (his  manner  has  insensibly  become  stiff er 
and  more  ceremonious)  :  "  I  think  we'll  leave  the 
Bazzards  out  of  it.  At  any  rate  they  aren't  here  to  de- 
fend themselves.  We  must  refer  the  whole  matter  to 
Dewburn  for  inquiry.  Meantime  here  you  are  on  leave 
and  I  dare  say  badly  wanting  a  rest.  My  advice  is: 
go  down  to  the  country.  .  .  .  Your  father  lives  in  the 
country,  doesn't  he?"  (Roger  nods.)  "Well,  go 
down  and  rusticate  a  bit  and  take  Mrs.  Brentham  with 
you.  In  a  week  or  two  the  newspapers  and  the  Non- 
conformist Conscience  will  be  in  full  cry  after  some- 
thing else.  As  to  whether  you  should  go  back,  we 
must  leave  that  to  the  Old  Man.  He  may  think  a 
change  of  scene  advisable.  Any  use  asking  you  to 
a  bachelor  dinner?  My  wife's  out  of  town  just 
now." 

Roger  (very  unwisely,  scenting  in  this  a  reluctance 
to  ask  Lucy  too)  :  "  No,  thank  you.  I  think  I'll  take 
your  advice  and  go  off  to  the  country.  Ungrateful 


IN  ENGLAND  247 

sort  of  country  —  I  mean  the  nation  —  mine  is !  Here 
I've  made  most  important  discoveries  I've  had  no  time 
to  report  on,  I've  .  .  .  I've  .  .  ."  (Feelings  too 
much  for  him.  Takes  his  hat  and  stick,  bows  to  Moly- 
neux  and  leaves  his  room.)  In  all  this  he  has  acted 
most  foolishly.  If  he'd  gone  to  Molyneux's  —  to 
"  Good  old  Spavins's  " —  as  the  clerks  called  him  in  the 
room  opposite  —  bachelor  dinner,  had  told  a  few  good 
stories  and  hunting  adventures,  Molyneux,  who  really 
had  his  kindly  side  like  most  men,  would  have  forgot- 
ten the  old  grudge  about  his  intrusive  appointment, 
have  taken  a  much  more  charitable  view  about  the  lost 
cipher  and  the  hasty  marriage  and  have  written  a  memo 
for  Lord  Wiltshire's  eye  which  would  have  suggested  a 
year's  employment  at  home  and  a  fresh  start  in  East 
Africa.  Mrs.  Molyneux  would  have  called  on  Mrs. 
Brentham  at  Hankey's  and  Mrs.  Brentham  would  have 
been  pronounced  by  Molyneux  "  a  dam'  good-lookin' 
wench  —  don't  wonder  she  turned  his  head  a  bit  — 
there  can't  have  been  much  to  look  at  in  East  Africa  " 
—  and  Brentham's  difficulties  were  over ;  and  the  whole 
fate  of  East  Africa  might  have  been  a  little  different. 
As  it  was,  he  wrote  some  such  memo  as  this  for  the 
information  of  the  Under-Secretary  of  State :  "  Saw 
Brentham  to-day  —  from  Zangia  Consulate,  East  Af- 
rica. Looks  rather  fagged.  Evidently  had  a  rough 
time.  But  very  angry  when  asked  to  explain  the  awk- 
ward circumstances  of  his  very  protracted  journey 
through  the  interior  with  the  lady  who  is  now  his  wife. 
He  protested  with  much  heat  against  the  attacks  of  the 
Press  and  the  attitude  of  the  Missionary  Societies.  I 
dare  say  he  is  a  maligned  man,  but  I  should  also  say  he 
is  what  we  call  in  diplomacy  '  un  mauvais  coucheur.' 
Difficult  to  get  on  with,  quarrelsome  with  colleagues. 
He  could  throw  no  light  on  the  loss  of  his  cipher.  Did 
not  seem  to  realize  what  trouble  and  expense  it  has 
caused.  He  has  six  months'  leave  of  absence  due. 


248     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

Suggest  when  that  is  coming  to  an  end  he  be  offered 
some  Consular  post  in  Norway  or  Algeria." 

Roger  called  at  6A,  Carlton  House  Terrace,  but  was 
told  by  the  man-servant  opening  the  door  that  Lady 
Silchester  and  the  little  Lord  Silchester  were  still  in 
the  country,  at  Engledene,  and  that  it  was  improbable 
her  Ladyship  would  be  in  town  again  until  the  autumn, 
being  in  deep  mourning.  Roger  scribbled  on  his  card 
(which  would  be  sent  on  with  other  cards  of  calling 
and  polite  inquiries)  : 

"  So  much  want  to  see  you.  Starting  to-morrow 
for  Church  Farm,  Aldermaston. —  ROGER." 

Roger  delivered  his  blushing  wife,  rather  over- 
dressed ( for  he  had  insisted  on  a  fashionable  outfit),  to 
her  parents  at  Aldermaston;  he  shook  hands  heartily 
with  his  father-in-law  to  whom  he  took  an  immediate 
liking,  kissed  his  mother-in-law  (to  her  confusion)  and 
his  sisters-in-law,  and  then  let  his  father-in-law  drive 
him  over  to  the  nearest  station  from  which  he  could 
get  a  train  to  Basingstoke  (for  Farleigh),  promising 
to  return  in  four  days  after  he  had  seen  his  father,  sis- 
ter, and  brothers,  one  of  them  at  Portsmouth.  When 
he  did  get  back  to  Church  Farm,  Lucy  was  in  bed,  ill, 
and  his  father  and  mother-in-law  were  looking  grave 
and  preoccupied.  They  were  also  —  as  country  peo- 
ple are  —  a  little  tiresomely  reticent.  What  had  hap- 
pened? This,  as  he  afterwards  pieced  it  together. 

When  Mrs.  Baines  had  received  Ann  Anderson's 
letter  —  written,  as  you  will  remember,  about  Novem- 
ber 30,  but  not  posted  from  Unguja  till  early  in  Janu- 
ary —  she  had  a  knock-down  blow.  It  is  true  the  Mis- 
sion on  the  receipt  of  a  telegram  from  Callaway  had 
warned  her  to  expect  serious  news  from  Hangodi,  but 
she  had  not  paid  much  attention,  so  convinced  was  she 
that  God  must  avert  all  harm  from  a  son  of  hers.  But 
the  letter  —  from  Ann,  too,  whom  she  would  have  wel- 
comed as  a  daughter-in-law  —  was  convincing,  and  for 


IN  ENGLAND  249 

the  first  few  hours  after  she  had  read  it  twice  through, 
she  locked  herself  into  their  joint  bedroom  to  Mr. 
Baines's  great  discomfiture  —  he  might  wash  and  sleep 
where  he  liked.  She  had  shouted  at  him  through  the 
keyhole,  in  a  hoarse,  strangled  voice  he  hardly  recog- 
nized as  hers,  that  his  son  John  was  dead,  killed  by  the 
"  A-rabs,"  no  doubt  with  that  slut  of  a  Lucy's  full  ap- 
proval; and  left  to  digest  this  dreadful  news  as  best  he 
might.  Eliza,  touched  to  great  pity  and  a  sympathetic 
sobbing  over  the  fate  of  Master  John,  made  him  up  a 
sort  of  a  shakedown  bedroom  arrangement  in  the 
"  libery,"  where  he  did  his  accounts.  .  .  . 

Mrs.  Baines  did  not  emerge  from  her  fastness  for  a 
day  and  a  half.  When  she  did  come  out  she  was  com- 
posed, but  with  such  an  awful  look  in  her  eyes  that 
no  one  dared  offer  sympathy  or  proffer  advice.  She 
gave  her  orders  in  as  few  words  as  possible.  She  set 
to  work  to  confection  the  deepest  mourning  and  pulled 
the  blinds  down,  and  down  they  had  to  remain  a  full 
week.  During  that  week  by  the  aid  of  candle-light  she 
wrote  a  good  many  letters  —  for  her.  Eliza,  who  had 
to  post  them,  for  Mrs.  Baines  shrank  from  encounter- 
ing friends  or  acquaintances  till  the  week  was  up,  no- 
ticed that  some  of  them  bore  quite  grand  addresses : 
the  member  for  Reading,  the  Marquis  of  Wiltshire,  the 
Editor  of  the  Review  of  Reviews.  .  .  . 

How  did  Mrs.  Baines  know  so  soon  that  Lucy  and 
Roger  had  returned  to  England  and  come  down  to  see 
the  Joslings  at  Church  Farm?  Why,  because  the 
miller  of  Aldermaston  saw  the  Brenthams  arrive  at 
Aldermaston  station  and  witnessed  the  greeting  of 
Farmer  Josling  —  such  a  fine  upstanding  man  —  and 
his  son-in-law  —  just  such  another,  only  rather  sallow- 
like  and  thin ;  and  the  miller  told  old  Mrs.  Bunsby  of 
the  general  shop  at  Theale ;  and  Mrs.  Bunsby.  wanting 
badly  a  supply  of  ginger  beer,  for  the  weather  was  get- 
ting warm  and  Oxford  undergraduates  sometimes 


250      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

pushed  their  walking  tours  as  far  as  the  Kennet  Val- 
ley —  Mrs.  Bunsby  walked  over  to  John  Baines  &  Co. 
that  very  afternoon  to  give  an  order  for  four  dozen  and 
mentioned  the  fact  of  "  pore  Master  John's  widow  " 
having  come  back  to  her  home  "  with  a  noo  'usband." 

The  assistant  who  registered  the  order  for  delivery 
in  their  next  round,  after  Mrs.  Bunsby  left  slipped  into 
Mr.  Baines's  "  libery,"  and  half-whispered  the  news  of 
Lucy's  return.  When,  soon  afterwards,  Mrs.  Baines 
came  into  the  dining-room  to  preside  over  the  tea 
table,  he  —  ( he  looked  very  aged  —  my  astral  body 
floating  over  the  scene  felt  a  twinge  of  pity  for  him ; 
in  his  own  dull  way  he  had  been  fond  and  proud  of  his 
only  son  and  worked  to  provide  him  with  a  competency 
—  some  day) — he,  with  some  preparatory  clearing  of 
the  throat,  said :  "  Er  .  .  .  Hrhm.  ...  Er  ... 
Lucy's  back,  I  hear.  .  .  ." 

"Indeed?"  replied  his  wife  swiftly.  "Where? 
Bridewell?  That's  where  she  ought  to  be.  .  .  ." 

"  I  dare  say,  my  dear,  but  she's  at  Church  Farm,  her 
parents',  you  know.  .  .  .  P'raps  she  could  tell  you 
something  about  John?  .  .  ." 

"  P'raps  she  could.  But  I  won't  have  her  name  men- 
tioned in  this  house.  Do  you  understand?  " 

Mr.  Baines  did,  and  took  this  intimation  as  final. 

The  next  day  was  Sunday.  Mrs.  Baines  spent  much 
of  the  day  (as  she  had  decided  she  could  not  go  to 
chapel)  communing  in  prayer  with  her  Maker  in  the 
bedroom  fastness.  Some  of  the  prayers  heard  by  the 
frightened  Eliza  through  the  keyhole  sounded  more 
like  objurgations,  and  the  Scripture  readings  were  the 
minatory  passage  directed  by  the  Minor  Prophets 
against  harlots  and  light  women. 

After  two  days  of  Aldermaston  Lucy  had  quite  re- 
covered her  spirits  —  she  had  felt  rather  depressed  at 
Hankey's  Mansions  and  not  at  all  lightened  at  heart  by 
her  week  of  shopping  under  Aunt  Pardew's  furtive 


IN  ENGLAND  251 

guidance  and  rather  checked  congratulations.  On  the 
Monday  morning  she  was  standing  with  her  parents 
and  Clara  in  front  of  the  beautiful  old  farm  house, 
inhaling  the  scents  of  May,  revelling  with  the  eye  over 
the  landscape  beauty  she  had  so  often  recalled  to  her- 
self in  Africa.  Farmer  Josling  had  repeatedly  given 
expression  to  the  pleasure  he  had  derived  from  the 
looks,  manner,  and  hand-grip  of  his  son-in-law,  and 
Mrs.  Josling  still  blushed  and  laughed  at  the  remem- 
brance of  his  having  kissed  her  cheek.  They  could  not 
help  the  gratification  of  feeling  that  their  daughter's 
second  marriage  was  into  a  social  stratum  worthy  of 
her  looks,  her  superior  education  and  their  hopes  for 
her.  .  .  .  • 

Clara,  walking  away  to  glance  at  the  bee-hives, 
called  back  to  the  group,  "  Here's  Mrs.  Baines  coming 
up  from  the  road." 

Instinctively  the  parents  withdrew  into  the  porch  of 
the  house,  leaving  their  daughter  to  meet  Mrs.  Baines 
for  the  first  few  minutes  alone,  with  no  other  listeners 
to  the  sad  story  she  had  to  tell.  Lucy,  like  the  bird 
fascinated  by  the  snake,  remained  where  she  was,  her 
fingers  playing  with  a  pansy  she  had  just  picked.  Mrs. 
Baines,  all  in  black,  with  black  plumes  to  a  large  bon- 
net and  black  gloves,  walked  slowly  and  consideringly 
up  to  the  spell-bound  Lucy.  When  she  was  close  to 
her  she  said :  "  What  .  .  .  have  .  .  .  you  done  .  .  . 
with  .  .  .  my  .  .  .  son?  .  .  ." 

"  Oh !  I  ...  I  ...  haven't  you  heard  ?  "  stam- 
mered Lucy. 

"  I  have  heard  .  .  .  and  I've  guessed  much  more 
than  I've  heard.  .  .  .  You  .  .  .  you  harlot  —  you 
adulteress  —  you  —  you  strumpet!  "  roared  Mrs. 
Baines,  who  had  been  cooking  her  vengeance  and  re- 
hearsing this  scene  with  a  dictionary,  during  the  last 
twenty-four  hours.  And  forthwith  before  Lucy  could 
reply  or  any  one  intervene  she  had  dealt  her  two  terrific 


252     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

boxes  on  the  ears,  first  on  one  side  and  then  on  the 
other. 

Lucy  fell  on  to  the  pansy  bed,  temporarily  stunned. 
Mr.  Josling,  scarcely  able  at  first  to  believe  ears  and 
eyes,  rushed  out  with  a  roar  like  a  bull,  picked  up  Mrs. 
Baines  round  her  iron  stays,  as  though  she  weighed  no 
more  than  a  wisp,  ran  round  to  the  other  side  of  the 
house  where  there  was  a  great  horse  trough  full  of 
\vater,  and  soused  in  this  the  head  and  huge  plumed 
bonnet  of  the  angry  woman.  And  again,  giving  her 
time  to  catch  her  breath,  he  plunged  her  head  and 
bonnet  beneath  the  water.  Then,  standing  her  on  her 
feet,  he  said,  "  There!  that'll  cool  your  hot  blood. 
That  is  some  return  for  your  half-killing  my  daugh- 
ter —  you  blasted  she-tiger,  you  .  .  .  Be  off!  Or  I'll 
set  the  dogs  on  you.  .  .  .  I'll  .  .  ." 

"  Father,  dear,"  said  Clara,  crying  for  pity  and  rage 
over  the  hapless  Lucy,  yet  careful  of  appearances : 
"  Father  dear,  don't  shout  so !  For  goodness'  sake,  let 
the  old  witch  go,  and  don't  attract  everybody's  atten- 
tion. What  ever  will  the  neighbours  think !  Here !  " 
she  said,  thrusting  on  Mrs.  Baines  the  umbrella  she  had 
brought  and  dropped  on  the  garden  path  at  the  moment 
of  the  assault,  "  be  off  with  you,  you  wicked  old 
woman.  It's  a  mercy  father  ain't  killed  you,  he's  that 
strong.  And  if  you've  done  any  real  harm  to  my  sis- 
ter, we'll  soon  let  you  know  and  have  you  up  before 
the  courts,  you  wicked  old  snivelling  psalm-singin' 
Methody!" 

Mrs.  Baines  said  nothing  to  this  counter-attack. 
She  drained  the  water  from  her  plumes  with  her  fin- 
gers, put  her  flopping  bonnet  as  straight  as  was  possi- 
ble, pressed  the  water  from  her  shoulders,  and  made 
some  attempt  to  wipe  her  face  with  a  handkerchief; 
and  then,  summoning  all  her  strength  and  resolution 
(for  in  reality  she  was  much  shaken  and  near  collapse), 
she  walked  firmly  past  them,  uttering  never  a  word, 


IN  ENGLAND  253 

walked  slowly  down  the  garden  path,  turned  to  the 
right  and  contrived  not  to  halt  on  her  way  back  to  the 
station  till  she  was  well  out  of  their  sight.  They  were 
a  little  over-awed  by  her  dignity. 

It  was  decided  —  and  Lucy  when  she  could  speak 
implored  them  to  adopt  this  negative  course  —  not  to 
write  to  Roger,  and  as  far  as  possible  not  to  talk  of  this 
painful  scene  to  any  neighbour.  But  to  keep  it  from 
country  gossip  was  an  impossibility.  This,  that,  or 
the  other  farm  servant  had  seen  it,  from  the  rafters  of 
a  barn  in  repair,  from  the  stables,  from  the  dairy  win- 
dow ;  and  so  the  treatment  old  Mrs.  Baines  had  served 
out  to  her  former  daughter-in-law  became  noised 
abroad,  penetrated  from  the  kitchen  and  still-room  of 
Engledene  House  to  its  mistress's  dressing-room.  A 
vague  rumour  of  it  even  reached  the  African  Depart- 
ment of  the  Foreign  Office  and  Molyneux  publicly 
shrugged  his  shoulders  in  Sir  Mulberry  Hawk's  room. 
The  Carnarvons  at  Highclere  heard  a  perversion  of  it 

—  rather  a  humorous  one  —  from  one  of  their  farmer 
tenants,  and  reconsidered  their  idea  of  asking  Bren- 
tham  and  Mrs.  Brentham  over  to  a  week-end  party  to 
relate  some  of  their  extraordinary  experiences.     The 
Vicar  of  Farleigh  Wallop  realized  that  something  of 
the  kind  had  occurred  to  interrupt  his  musings  on  the 
arrangements  of  the  streets  in  Calleva  Atrebatum,  and 
when  he  drove  over  with  Maud  to  make  the  acquaint- 
ance of  his  daughter-in-law  —  now  convalescent  and 
thankful  to  find  the  drum  of  the  worst  smacked  ear 
had  not  been  split  —  he  was  merely  coldly  polite  and 
expressed  very  little  interest  in  missionary  questions. 
Indeed  he  took  no  interest  in  Christian  Missions  after 
700  A.D.     Up  to  that  time  he  reckoned  —  more  or  less 

—  they  had  been  spreading  the  ideas  of  Imperial  Rome, 
of  Roman  civilization. 

Roger,  however,  though  he  commented  little  on  the 


254     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

episode  of  the  assault,  and  felt  in  every  way  the  least 
said,  soonest  mended,  borrowed  his  father-in-law's  rid- 
ing-horse and  rode  early  one  morning  over  to  Tile- 
hurst.  He  entered  the  factory,  of  design,  just  as  Mr. 
Baines  was  about  to  take  his  seat  in  the  office  and  run 
his  eyes  over  the  day's  orders.  "Oh,  don't  be 
alarmed !  "  he  said  to  Mr.  Baines,  who  was  instinctively 
about  to  withdraw,  guessing  his  visitor's  identity. 
"  I'm  not  a  violent  heathen  like  your  wife.  Sit  down 
and  let  us  talk  this  over  like  sensible  men." 

He  then  put  the  matter  very  plainly  before  Mr. 
Baines. 

Mrs.  Baines,  summoned  by  half-fearful,  half-exult- 
ant Eliza,  had  "  locked  herself  in  her  bedroom,  she 
'ave  an'  ast  me  to  go  for  the  police !  " 

"  Then  you,  too,"  said  Roger  to  the  startled  Elizn, 
"  remain  and  hear  what  I  have  to  say.  Since  your 
termagant  of  a  mistress  refuses  to  come,  you  shall  re- 
peat my  words  to  her.  You  are,  from  what  my  wife 
tells  me,  an  old  and  trusted  servant  of  the  family  " 
(Eliza  bridled  and  pleated  the  hem  of  her  apron). 
"  When  she  returns  to  sanity,  you  may  get  a  chance 
of  saying  a  word  to  your  mistress  in  season,  even  it" 
her  husband  has  not  the  courage  to  do  so.  Tell  her 
then,  if  she  ever  annoys  or  slanders  or  upsets  my  wife 
in  any  way  I  will  leave  no  stone  unturned  to  punish 
her.  And  if  she  appears  at  Church  Farm  or  anywhere 
else  again  with  the  intention  of  assaulting  my  wife  I 
will  knock  her  on  the  head  like  the  mad  dog  she  is. 
Now  you  can  leave  us.  But  I  trust  also  to  you  as  an 
honourable  woman  and  one  who  was  sincerely  fond  of 
poor  John  Baines,  who  ought  never  to  be  connected 
with  these  hateful  sayings  and  doings,  not  to  chatter 
about  this  business  outside  this  house." 

And  Eliza  did  not.  She  was  much  impressed  by 
Brentham's  appeal.  The  interview  with  John's  father 
even  ended  in  a  kind  of  reconciliation.  He  heard 


IX  ENGLAND  255 

from  Brentham  for  the  first  time  the  whole  story,  so 
far  as  it  was  known,  of  the  circumstances  which  led 
up  to  the  attack  on  the  station,  John's  death,  and  Lucy's 
journey  to  the  coast;  of  how  her  baby  had  died  and  how 
ill  she  had  been;  of  the  Stotts,  and  of  Ann  Jamblin's 
obstinacy.  Roger  purposely  prolonged  the  interview. 
It  was  doing  the  miserable  father  good,  and  was  keep- 
ing Mrs.  Baines  a  prisoner  in  her  bedroom  just  when 
she  wanted  to  be  busy  at  house-work. 

Maud  on  her  return  from  visiting  the  Joslings  tight- 
ened her  lips  and  "  went  for  "  her  father  as  he  had 
never  been  truth-told  before;  so  Mrs.  Baines,  if  she 
did  harm  to  Lucy's  good  fame  and  gave  her  nervous 
system  a  nasty  shock,  also  provoked  good  in  other  di- 
rections. A  disturbance  of  the  kind  seldom  fails  to 
clear  the  air  and  create  a  fresher  atmosphere.  Maud 
reproached  her  father  bitterly  with  his  incivility  to  his 
eldest  son's  wife;  with  his  general  indifference  to  the 
well-being  of  his  children,  his  selfish  absorption  in  his 
archaeological  work,  his  unfairness  to  them  in  lavishing 
on  it  funds  which  should  have  been  their  patrimony. 
She  even  issued  a  sort  of  ultimatum:  the  subsidies  to 
the  Silchester  Excavation  fund  must  cease;  the  curate 
at  Farleigh  must  be  given  his  conge  and  the  Vicar  — 
still  able-bodied  —  carry  out  his  own  Church  duties : 
or  she  would  go  away  and  earn  her  own  living  as  a 
secretary  or  something  or  other.  And  she  was  at  once, 
and  on  his  authority,  to  ask  Lucy  to  stay  —  with 
Roger,  of  course  —  for  at  least  a  month.  He  gave  in. 
Maud  had  deeper  plans  hidden  under  this  surface 
wrath.  •  Roger  was  in  difficulties  with  the  Foreign  Of- 
fice, she  guessed.  He  had  resigned  from  the  Indian 
Army.  He  might  at  any  time  have  to  forge  a  new 
career  for  himself  and  would  want  a  little  capital  to 
start  with.  She  reckoned  that  her  father  having  orig- 
inally been  a  well-to-do  man  and  her  mother  having 
come  to  him  with  a  substantial  dowry,  there  ought  to 


256     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

be  a  least  twelve  thousand  pounds  to  be  divided  be- 
tween the  four  of  them.  If  that  left  her  father  almost 
entirely  dependent  on  his  income  —  about  five  hundred 
a  year  —  from  the  twin  benefices  of  Farleigh  and 
Cliddesden,  that  would  serve  him  right.  He  had  no 
business  to  squander  his  children's  money  —  as  it  really 
was  —  on  a  work  of  excavation  which  the  County  or 
the  Nation  should  finance. 

A  little  repentant  and  more  than  a  little  rheumatic  — 
(besides,  Roman  Silchester  was  turning  out  so  distress- 
ingly Christian  and  so  little  Pompeian  and  Pagan)  — 
he  agreed  at  any  rate  to  look  into  the  matter.  The 
letter  was  sent  to  Lucy,  and  she  came,  now  quite  re- 
stored to  health.  She  found  in  Maud  the  selfless 
friend  and  good  adviser  she  had  long  needed.  All  she 
begged  and  prayed  of  Roger  was  that  he  might  leave 
her  at  Farleigh  for  a  time  and  not  frighten  her  and 
upset  her  nerves  by  requiring  of  her  the  going  out  into 
smart  Society,  where  she  was  ever  on  the  twitter  for 
fear  of  being  questioned  as  to  her  birth  and  bringing-up 
and  the  circumstances  of  her  life  in  Africa. 

Roger  rather  ruefully  consented.  Maud  would 
gradually  cure  her  of  her  nerves  and  her  rusticity. 
Meantime  he  would  now  tackle  Sibyl.  Sibyl  had  taken 
no  notice  of  his  card  and  call;  but  about  three  weeks 
afterwards  had  written  to  Maud,  picturing  herself  as 
having  now  emerged  from  a  swoon  of  grief  and  being 
ready  to  see  Roger  for  a  few  minutes  if  he  would 
promise  to  move  gently  and  speak  in  a  level  voice,  as 
the  least  thing  upset  her.  Pressed  to  be  more  definite, 
she  consented  to  see  him  —  and  him  only  —  at-Engle- 
dene  on  a  certain  Wednesday  afternoon  at  three  o'clock. 

He  found  her  in  a  little  boudoir,  which  was  draped 
with  pleated  lavender-mauve  cashmere  and  shaded  to 
a  dim  light.  She  was  dressed  in  black,  not  having  as 
yet  the  hardihood  to  discard  widows'  weeds,  still  less 


IN  ENGLAND  257 

some  diaphanous,  filmy  coiffe,  some  ghost  of  a  widow's 
cap.  Queen  Victoria  was  still  a  great  power  in  Society 
and  kept  Peeresses  in  order.  If  you  were  too  daring 
you  might  be  banned  at  Court  and  then  where  would 
your  social  and  political  influence  be  ? 

"  Wheel  up,  or  better  still  lift  up  —  I  can't  bear  the 
slightest  jar,  just  now  —  that  small  armchair,  Roger  — 
the  purple  velvet  one  —  and  put  it  near  enough  for  me 
to  hear  and  speak  without  effort;  but  not  too  near, 
because  I  notice  you  have  a  very  powerful  aura.  I've 
only  just  learnt  about  auras,  and  I  realize  now  what  a 
difference  they  make !  .  .  ." 

"  All  right,"  said  Roger,  obeying  these  instructions, 
"but  what's  an  aura?  Is  it  the  smell  of  my  Harris 
tweeds,  or  do  you  doubt  my  having  had  a  bath  this 
morning?  " 

"  Don't  be  so  perfectly  horrid  .  .  .  and  coarse.  .  .  . 
You  never  used  to  be  coarse,  whatever  you  were  — 
I  suppose  it  comes  from  marrying  a  farmer's  daughter ; 
but  for  the  matter  of  that,  what  am  If  My  poor  dear 
dad  is  trying  hard  to  be  a  farmer  after  spending  his 
best  years  in  the  Army.  I  didn't  mean  anything  much 
about  your  '  aura,'  except,  I  suppose,  that  as  I'm  only 
recently  widowed  all  my  relations  with  men-visitors 
should  be  a  little  frigid.  But  I'm  simply  talking  non- 
sense to  gain  time,  to  remember  what  I  wanted  to  say 
to  yon."  (A  pause.)  .  .  .  "Roger!  Your  dreadful 
letter  from  that  Gouging  place,  coming  just  on  top  of 
poor  Francis's  death,  knocked  me  over.  The  doctors 
put  it  all  down  to  Francis,  of  course  ...  I  don't  deny 
that  his  death  did  upset  me.  .  .  .  But  I'd  been  expect- 
ing that  any  time  within  the  last  six  months.  .  .  .  The 
doctors  told  me  definitely  last  winter  his  heart  was  very 
unsound  and  that  he  must  not  over-exert  himself  in  any 
way  or  be  contraried  or  argued  with.  .  .  .  That  was 
why  I  gave  up  the  orange-velvet  curtains  and  general 
redecoration  of  the  dining-room  at  6A,  Carlton  House 


258     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

Terrace  —  which  is  dingy  beyond  belief.  I  shall  do  it 
now.  .  .  .  It's  too  early  for  tea  ...  won't  you 
smoke?"  (Roger:  "Thank  you.")  "  Well,  there's 
everything  on  that  little  table.  .  .  .  No.  Not  those 
ones ;  they've  got  the  wee-est  flavour  of  opium.  .  .  . 
Obliged  to  do  something  for  my  nerves.  .  .  .  Well, 
now,  about  your  Gouging  letter.  ...  I  mean  about 
your  marriage.  .  .  .  My  dear  Roger!  What  a  gaffe! 
I  mean,  how  could  you?  " 

"Could  I  what?" 

"  Ruin  your  hopes  and  mine?  " 

"  Well,  I  did  hope  to  marry  Lucy  .  .  .  for  at  least 
six  months  before  the  knot  was  tied.  .  .  .  Ever  since 
her  husband's  death.  So  my  hopes  were  fulfilled. 
And  as  to  you,  I  never  prevented  you  from  marrying 
Lord  S.  So  where  the  ruin  comes  in,  I  can't  see." 

"Oh,"  wailed  Sibyl,  "  why  beat  about  the  bush? 
You  must  have  known  that  I  always  hoped  if  anything 
happened  to  poor  Francis  —  and  anything  might  well 
have  done  so  —  after  all,  you  or  I  might  be  in  a  railway 
accident  or  break  our  necks  out  hunting.  In  such  case 
you  must  have  known  I  counted  on  you  ...  I  mean, 
on  our  being  happy  at  last.  .  .  .  Don't  interrupt !  .  .  . 
And  just  think!  Francis  loved  me  awfully.  I  really 
was  perfectly  sweet  to  him  and  did  my  duty  to  him  in 
every  way.  His  gratitude  for  that  boy  .  .  .  for  a  di- 
rect heir!  .  .  .  Well,  after  Clithy  was  born  he  made 
his  will!  .  .  .  Don't  be  silly  .  .  .  and  don't  joke  about 
things  I  regard  almost  as  sacred.  ...  I  mean  Francis 
re-made  his  will;  and  left  me  sole  guardian  of  the  boy 
and  sole  trustee,  sole  everything;  and  mistress  for  my 
life  of  Engledene,  and  of  6A,  till  Clithy  came  of  age 
.  .  .  and  a  jointure  of  £10,000  a  year  to  keep  them  up. 
Clithy  has  also  the  Silchester  house  which  is  let  and 
which  I  intend  to  keep  let  till  he  comes  of  age,  the 
moors  in  Scotland  and  the  shooting  lodge.  Of  course 
he  has  the  reversionary  rights  of  everything  after  my 


IN  ENGLAND  259 

death.  And  equally  of  course  he  has  fifteen  thousand 
a  year,  which  I  control  till  he  is  twenty-one  or  until  he 
marries.  .  .  . 

"  Just  think  what  I  could  have  done  for  you,  out  of 
all  this  —  if  you'd  waited!  If  only  you'd  waited !  .  .  ." 
(buries  her  face  in  the  mauve  silk  cushions  and  cries  a 
little  or  pretends  to).  (Roger  fidgets  on  his  chair. 
An  exquisite  little  purple  Sevres  clock  on  the  white 
mantelpiece  ticks  .  .  .  ticks  .  .  .  ticks.) 

Roger:  "  Look  here,  Sibyl.  You're  altogether  on 
the  wrong  tack,  believe  me.  You  might  have  married 
me  in  '86.  I  was  quite  ready  then  and  fancied  myself 
in  love  with  you.  But  if  you  had  we  mightn't  have  got 
on.  My  seven  hundred  a  year  would  have  been  no- 
where to  give  you  surroundings  like  this.  .  .  ."  (And 
he  looks  round  the  boudoir  "  done  "  in  white,  laven- 
der, mauve  and  purple,  with  its  exquisite  bits  of  furni- 
ture, its  velvet-covered  armchair  and  Charles  II  day- 
bed,  and  pillow  covers  of  mauve  silk;  and  looked  also 
at  the  sinuous  figure  of  the  woman  coiled  on  the  day- 
bed  in  her  filmy  black  dress,  with  her  face  half  buried 
in  the  silk  cushions,  and  one  disconsolate  arm  lying 
listlessly  along  her  side,  and  at  the  magnificent  rings 
of  emeralds  and  diamonds  on  the  pink  fingers.)  "  You 
were  quite  right :  you  could  never  have  stood  the  strain 
of  Africa.  I'll  tell  you  by  and  bye  some  of  the  things 
Lucy  and  I  went  through."  (At  this  hint  of  comrade- 
ship with  Lucy,  the  little  black  velvet  shoes  gave  angry 
thumps  on  the  frame  of  the  day-bed.)  "  I  know," 
continues  Roger,  "  you  used  to  throw  out  mysterious 
hints  after  you  were  married  that  I  might  wait  till 
some  far-off  date  when  you  were  free;  I  mean  after 
Lord  Silchester  was  dead.  But  what  decent  man 
would  have  taken  you  at  your  word  ?  Why,  Silchester 
night  well  be  alive  now.  He  did  not  die  of  old 
age.  .  .  ." 

Sibyl  (in  a  muffled  voice):     "N-no;  he  ...  he 


26o     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

.  .  .  didn't.     He  —  overrated  his  strength.     He  —  he 

—  oh,  hozv  can  I  tell  you  ?     He  was  so  anxious  to  play 
a  great  part  in  public  affairs  .  .  .  but  he  had  lost 
all  his  energy.  .  .  ."     (Sitting  up  with  flushed  cheeks 

—  damnably    good-looking,    Roger    feels.)     "Well! 
What  can  I  do  for  you?     You've  failed  me.     But  I 
suppose  you've  come  here  to  ask  me  to  help  you  in  some 
way.     Men  don't  generally  waste  their  time  on  after- 
noon calls  without  a  motive.     What  is  it?     I've  got 
no  influence  anywhere  since  Francis  died"   (a  sob). 
"  So  it's  no  good  asking  me  to  write  to  Lord  Wiltshire 
or  to  Spavins.     I  hear  you  are  out  of  favour  at  the 
F.O.     It's  not  my  fault,  is  it?     It's  all  due  to  your 
gallivanting  after  missionaries'  wives.  .  .  ."     (Roger 
looks  sullen.)   .  .  .  "Heigh  ho!     I  expect  with  all  this 
crying  and  tousling  among  cushions,  to  hide  I  was 
crying  from  your  cynical  eyes,  I'd  better  go  into  my 
room  and  bathe  my  face  before  the  butler  brings  in 
the  tea.  .  .  .  There!  you  can  pull  up  two  of  the  blinds 

—  when  I  am  gone  —  my  eyes  are  so  red  —  and  you 
can  look  at  some  of  my  new  books  till  I  come  in  to 
make  the  tea.     You  mustn't  dream  of  going  before 
we've  had  tea  and  finished  our  talk." 

"  I  suppose,"  said  Sibyl  a  quarter  of  an  hour  later 
when  they  were  discussing  tea  and  tea-cake  and  pate- 
de-foie  sandwiches  and  assorted  cakelets,  "  what  you 
really  came  to  ask  was  would  I  present  this  Lucy-pucy 
of  yours  at  Court.  But,  my  dear,  I  shall  be  in  mourn- 
ing for  a  year,  and  the  Queen " 

"  Lord  no !  Such  a  thing  never  entered  my  head. 
It  would  scare  Lucy  into  fits.  I  hope  before  next  sea- 
son comes  round  I  shall  be  back  in  Africa  —  or  some- 
where. So  far  as  I  connected  Lucy  with  this  visit  I 
might  have  intended  to  ask  you  to  let  me  bring  her  here 
one  day,  and  for  you  to  be  kind  to  her  .  .  .  not 


IN  ENGLAND  261 

frighten  her,  as  you  very  well  could  do,  pretending  all 
the  time  to  be  her  best  friend.  .  .  ." 

Sibyl:  "Well:  I'll  tell  you  what  you  shall  do. 
You  must  remember  I'm  in  mourning,  of  course.  .  .  . 
We  always  have  to  think  of  what  the  servants  will  say. 
.  .  .  And  —  ah!  Did  I  tell  you?  Aunt  Christabel  is 
here.  I  sent  her  out  the  longest  drive  I  could  think 
of,  so  that  we  might  have  our  afternoon  alone;  still, 
she's  staying  here  till  I  emerge  from  the  deepest  of 
my  mourning.  ...  By  the  bye  she's  horrified  at  your 
marriage,  just  as  she  used  to  be  horrified  at  the  idea  of 
your  marrying  me.  .  .  .  Well,  bring  your  Lucy  over 
one  day  at  the  end  of  July  and  I'll  just  have  a  look  at 
her.  And  then,  in  the  autumn  —  say  October  —  you 
and  she,  and  of  course  if  you  like  to  have  them,  Maurice 
and  Geoffrey  too,  could  come  here  for  the  shooting. 
Of  course  I  shan't  have  a  regular  party ;  but  somebody 
must  come  and  shoot  the  pheasants.  The  Queen 
couldn't  object  to  that.  I've  asked  a  man  —  I  did 
before  Francis's  death  —  to  come.  You  might  like  to 
meet  him :  a  Sir  Willowby  Patterne.  .  .  .  Dare  say 
you've  heard  of  him?  " 

Roger:  "  I've  heard  no  good  of  him.  .  .  ." 
"  Oh,  what  tittle-tattlers  and  scandal-mongers  you 
men  are !  I  think  he's  so  amusing,  and  every  one  says 
he's  a  splendid  shot.  .  .  .  However,  we  will  make  up 
just  a  tiny  party  and  you  and  Lucy  shall  entertain  for 
me.  I  shall  purposely  be  very  little  seen  and  shall  give 
out  my  cousins  have  come  over  to  help  me  with  my 
guests.  .  .  .  And,  Roger!  If  I  am  to  help  you  you 
must  help  me.  The  doctor  says  I  positively  must  take 
up  my  riding  again  unless  i  am  to  drift  into  being  an 
invalid.  Couldn't  you  —  sometimes  —  whilst  you're 
down  in  this  part  of  the  world  —  come  over  and  ride 
with  me  ?  I  can  '  mount '  you.  You  could  ride  poor 
Francis's  cob  .  .  .  not  showy  but  very  steady." 


262     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

"  I  will,  when  I  come  back  from  town,"  said  Roger, 
and  took  his  departure,  not  at  all  dissatisfied  with  his 
afternoon. 

Two  days  afterwards  he  thought  it  might  be  prudem 
to  see  how  things  were  going  at  the  Foreign  Office. 
So  he  went  up  to  town,  changed  into  town  togs  at  Han- 
key's  (where  their  flat  was  becoming  a  white  elephant, 
owing  to  Lucy's  dislike  to  London,  so  he  arranged  to 
give  it  up),  and  betook  himself  to  Downing  Street, 
and  asked  to  see  Mr.  Bennet  Molyneux.  "  Mr.  Bennet 
Molyneux,"  he  was  presently  told,  "  is  very  sorry,  sir, 
but  he  is  much  engaged  this  morning ;  would  you  go 
into  the  Department  and  see  one  of  the  young  gentle- 
men there  ?  " 

The  Department  was  a  large,  long  room  with  a 
cubby-hole  at  its  further  end  for  the  accommodation  of 
the  senior  clerk,  a  sort  of  school  prefect  who  had  to 
keep  order  among  the  high-spirited  juniors  and  there- 
rore  required  to  work  a  little  apart  from  them.  When 
Brentham  entered  the  main  room,  announced  by  the 
office  messenger,  he  recognized  two  friends  of  yore  and 
several  new,  ingenuous  faces.  There  also  emerged 
from  the  cubby  hole  a  man  whom  he  had  known  as  a 
junior  three  years  previously:  an  agreeable  gentleman 
of  agricultural  and  sporting  tastes,  who,  because  of 
his  occasional  remonstrances  and  enforcement  of  disci- 
pline, was  known  as  "  Snarley  Yow  or  the  Dog  Fiend." 
Then  there  were  "  Rosie  "  Walrond  and  Ted  Parsons. 
(The  others  do  not  matter  in  this  narrative:  they 
merely  served  as  chorus  and  acclaimers  of  the  witti- 
cisms of  the  elder  boys.  They  were  all  nice  to  look 
at,  all  well-mannered  and  all  well-dressed.)  "  Rosie  " 
Walrond  was  a  young  man  —  older  than  he  looked  — 
with  wavy  flaxen  hair  and  mocking  grey  eyes,  and  an 
extremely  cynical  manner  overlying  an  exceedingly 
kind  heart. 

Walrond:     "  Hullo !     Here's  Brentham,  the  rescuer 


IN  ENGLAND  263 

of  beleaguered  Gospellers.  We've  got  a  grudge 
against  you.  You  came  here  months  ago  and  were 
closeted  with  Spavins  and  never  gave  us  a  look-in. 
And  we  were  dying  to  hear  all  about  the  elopement 
and  its  sequel.  We  were  prepared  to  subscribe  to  a 
wedding  present  for  a  teller  of  good  stories.  .  .  ." 

Then  he  added:     "  D'you  admire  my  grotto?  " 

Brentham,  after  the  necessary  greetings  and  intro- 
ductions, strode  up  to  "  Rosie's  "  desk.  Its  ledges  and 
escarpments  were  piled  with  rock  specimens  on  which 
tattered,  brown,  and  half-decipherable  labels  had  been 
pasted. 

"My  mineral  specimens  .  .  .  from"  (he  checked 
himself)  ..."  from  East  Africa!  Then  you  never 
sent  them  on  ?  " 

"My  dear  chap!  W7here  was  I  to  send  them  to? 
The  Consular  Mail  bags  —  two  of  them  —  arrived  here 
all  right,  addressed  to  me,  but  nary  a  letter  with  them 
or  any  directions.  Also  two  skulls  which,  as  you  see, 
decorate  our  mantelpiece,  and  which  I  am  proposing 
to  have  mounted  in  silver  at  Snarley's  expense  for  our 
Departmental  Dinner.  Meantime,  I  have  arranged  my 
desk  as  a  grotto,  in  spite  of  the  office  cleaner's  objec- 
tions. .  .  ." 

Brentham:  "  I  suppose  the  letter  of  directions  went 
astray.  I  asked  you  to  send  the  rocks  to  the  School  of 
Mines  and  the  skulls  to  the  Natural  History  Museum. 
However,  I'll  take  them  all  away  presently  in  a  cab.'' 

"  But  not  the  skulls,  I  beg,  just  as  we  were  being 
initiated  into  Devil  worship  by  Snarley,  who  has  learnt 
the  Black  Mass.  .  .  ." 

"  Yes,  the  skulls,  too.     They're  most  important.  .  .  ." 

"  But  so  are  we,"  said  Parsons. 

Then  followed  half  an  hour  of  chaff,  out  of  which 
Roger  gleaned  no  grain  of  information  as  to  his  own 
probable  fate  and  was  too  diffident  to  ask  outright  if 
any  decision  as  to  his  return  had  been  arrived  at.  He 


264      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

accepted  an  invitation  to  dine  with  the  Department  at 
the  Cheshire  Cheese  and  meet  Arthur  Broadmead ;  then 
drove  to  the  School  of  Mines  in  Jermyn  Street,  handed 
in  his  rocks  and  asked  the  Curator  for  a  report  on 
them,  at  his  leisure.  After  that,  Professor  Flower  and 
the  skulls;  which  were  those  of  two  men  of  that  Ha- 
mitic  race  colonizing  the  Happy  Valley.  He  had  found 
them  lying  about  on  the  outskirts  of  a  village  and  had 
received  the  careless  permission  of  the  villagers  to  take 
them  away.  They  might  serve  to  determine  the  rela- 
tionships of  this  incongruous  type. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

SIBYL   AS    SIREN 

IN  August,  1889,  Lucy  conveyed  to  Roger  her  belief 
that  she  was  going  to  have  a  child. 

"  But  that  is  no  reason  you  should  not  come  down 
with  me  to  Sibyl's  place  in  Scotland.  You  can't  be 
going  to  have  a  baby  till  —  till  well  on  in  the  winter, 
and  meantime  a  stay  in  the  Highlands  will  brace  you 
up.  Of  course  as  Sibyl  is  in  mourning  she  can  only 
have  a  very  small  house  party  —  just  two  or  three  men 
like  myself  to  shoot  the  grouse,  rabbits  and  stags.  I 
don't  suppose  there  will  be  any  women  there  except 
her  aunt  and  you."  Lucy  acquiesced  unwillingly. 

She  was  living  once  more  with  her  parents,  while 
Roger's  plans  were  so  unsettled.  The  rooms  at  Han- 
key's  had  been  given  up,  and  on  his  frequent  journeys 
to  London  —  mainly  on  Sibyl's  business  —  he  slept  at 
Aunt  Pardew's  Hotel  in  Great  Ormond  Street,  where 
they  made  him  very  comfortable.  He  had  taken  Lucy 
over  to  Engledene  twice  in  July  —  once  he  had  left  her 
there  a  whole  afternoon,  tete-a-tete  with  the  still  lan- 
guid young  widow.  On  that  occasion  he  had  pur- 
posely ridden  over  to  Tilehnrst  to  see  Mr.  Baines  with 
more  news  —  sent  on  by  Callaway  from  Unguja  — 
about  Ann  Anderson  and  the  restoration  of  Hangodi 
station,  and  what  the  Mission  proposed  to  do  in  regard 
to  a  memorial  grave-stone.  It  tickled  his  sense  of 
humour  that  he  should  improve  his  acquaintance  with 
John's  father  and  thus  allay  any  local  feeling  against 
Lucy:  his  visits  there  not  only  cheered  the  Aerated 
Waters'  manufacturer,  but  they  enraged  Mrs.  Baines. 

265 


266     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

She  was  obliged  all  the  time  to  keep  locked  up  in  her 
bedroom,  and  this  caused  Eliza  to  get  out  of  hand. 

But  so  far,  the  hope  of  a  friendship  growing  up  be- 
tween his  wife  and  his  one-time  sweetheart  had  little 
encouragement  from  either.  Sibyl,  not  wishing  to  fall 
out  with  Roger,  declared  she  tried  to  like  Lucy.  Yet 
when  other  people  were  present  she  somehow  brought 
out  her  rusticity  and  simplicity,  or  she  adopted  towards 
her  a  patronizing  manner  which  was  evident  even  to 
the  not  very  acute  senses  of  Roger's  wife. 

The  visit  to  Glen  Sporran  Lodge  did  not  improve 
their  relations.  Lucy  in  matters  of  dress  was  by  no 
means  without  taste  or  discernment,  but  she  was  quite 
ignorant  of  the  modernest  modes.  She  had  no  idea 
that  a  stay  in  the  Highlands  —  even  in  1889  —  in- 
volved a  special  wardrobe :  short,  kilted  skirts  and  high- 
buttoned  leggings,  boots,  or  spats  for  the  day's  adven- 
tures —  going  to  meet  the  guns,  tramping  over  the 
moors,  picnics  when  the  wet  weather  permitted,  and  all 
the  shifts  for  facing  a  good  deal  of  rain  without  look- 
ing forlorn  or  ridiculous.  Trailing  skirts  and  wet 
weather  were  irreconcilable;  so  were  yachting  and  a 
silk  dress.  Perpetual  sitting  indoors  in  a  town  dress, 
over  a  turf  fire,  and  reading  novels  provoked  sarcasms 
not  only  from  Sibyl  but  from  the  tart  tongue  of  Aunt 
Christabel ;  who  wasn't  at  all  inclined  to  spare  Lucy. 

What  had  that  good-looking  Roger  with  such  a 
career  before  him  had  in  his  mind  that  he  should  throw 
himself  away  on  this  village  schoolmistress?  She  did 
not  care,  either,  for  Sibyl's  new  infatuation  for  Roger; 
would  have  liked  to  keep  them  well  apart.  The  distant 
cousinship  was  not  through  her  or  her  sister,  Mrs. 
Grayburn,  but  through  Roger's  mother  and  Colonel 
Grayburn.  Sibyl,  when  her  year  of  mourning  was  up, 
had  much  better  marry  again  into  the  peerage;  and  if 
she  wanted  a  smart  man  as  Agent  —  for  land-agents 
of  the  middle-class-bailiff  type  were  "  passes  de  mode  " 


SIBYL  AS  SIREN  267 

on  all  big  estates  .  .  .  well,  there  was  Willowby,  Wil- 
lowby  Patterne  (a  nephew-in-law  of  Aunt  Christabel), 
who  really  might  very  well  do  for  the  post.  Willowby 
had  been  very  wild,  had  run  through  much  of  his  own 
money  and  his  unsuitable  wife's  —  they  were  never 
asked  out  together.  But  he  was  a  first-class  shot,  had 
been  to  Canada  with  the  Duke  of  Ulster,  knew  a  lot 
about  blood-stock,  had  tried  farming  and  ranching  and 
would  be  quite  all  there  helping  Sibyl  entertain  her 
house  parties  and  giving  an  eye  to  the  manly  educa- 
tion of  James  —  Aunt  Christabel  did  not  countenance 
Sibyl's  silly  freak  of  imposing  the  name  of  "  Clithe- 
roe  "  on  the  little  Lord  Silchester. 

Lucy  had  the  greatest  regard  for  economy  and  al- 
ways wanted  to  save  Roger  from  any  unnecessary  ex- 
penditure. She  remembered  that  she  had  come  to  him 
without  a  dowry  and  that  his  future  financially  was 
very  uncertain.  So  that  she  had  not  taken  him  at  his 
word,  "  Spend  what  you  like,"  at  the  Sloane  Street 
shops  when  they  were  last  up  in  town  together.  She 
had  only  brought  two  evening  dresses  with  her  to  Glen 
Sporran,  and  one  of  them  a  plain  black  silk.  After 
they  had  become  familiar  to  the  eye,  Sibyl  had  offered 
to  lend  some  of  her  gowns,  but  had  done  it  in  such  a 
way  that  Lucy's  pride  was  touched  and  she  declined, 
with  an  unwonted  sparkle  in  her  eye  and  a  turning  of 
the  rabbit  on  the  stoat.  Sibyl  then,  half  amusedly, 
dropped  this  method  of  annoyance  and  openly  praised 
Mrs.  Brentham  for  her  simplicity  of  life  and  regard 
for  economy. 

All  this  was  rather  amusing  to  the  speculative  and 
speculating  Sir  Willowby  Patterne  who  arrived  at  Glen 
Sporran  a  fortnight  later  than  Roger  and  Lucy.  He 
must  then  have  been  about  thirty.  As  you  surmise 
from  his  name,  he  was  descended  from  a  famous  mid- 
nineteenth  century  baronet.  His  grandfather  (in  di- 
plomacy) married  a  Russian  lady  of  the  Court  after 


268     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

the  Napoleonic  wars  when  Russians  were  in  the  fash- 
ion. But  I  think  it  wholly  unfair  to  attribute  to  this 
alliance  the  curious  vein  of  cruelty  which  ran  through 
his  descendants  and  which  in  Willowby's  father  was 
slaked  by  the  contemporary  British  field  sports.  This 
father  died  from  the  envenomed  bite  of  an  impaled 
badger,  and  in  Willowby's  case  there  was  a  long  minor- 
ity; so  that  he  started  at  twenty-one  —  already  a  sub- 
altern in  the  Guards  —  with  quite  a  respectable  fortune 
to  "  blue."  He  had  been  a  vicious,  tipsy  boy  at  Eton 
and  did  not  improve  as  he  grew  older.  One  thing  that 
developed  with  him  into  a  mania  was  the  love  of  kill- 
ing. He  had  seen  a  little  service  in  the  Sudan,  but 
disgusted  his  brother  officers  by  his  exultation  over  the 
more  gory  episodes  in  skirmishes  (he  generally  kept 
out  of  battles),  and  by  his  interest  in  executions  and 
floggings.  Owing  to  family  influence  he  was  for  a 
very  brief  time  in  the  suite  of  a  travelling  Royalty; 
but  an  episode  in  the  garden  of  a  Lisbon  hotel,  when 
he  with  a  friend  was  seen  worrying  a  cat  to  death  with 
two  bull-terriers  —  and  laughing  f renziedly  the  while 
—  put  an  end  to  that  appointment.  He  had  had  some 
success  on  the  turf  and  in  steeplechase  riding,  and  over 
shooting  pigeons  at  Monte  Carlo;  had  betrayed  quite 
a  number  of  trusting  women  —  including  his  wife ;  but 
nevertheless  was  rather  popular  still  in  Society,  espe- 
cially the  society  of  rich,  idle  women,  seeking  after 
sensation  without  scandal.  What  there  was  about  him, 
save  his  faultless  tailoring  and  evil  reputation  to  at- 
tract women,  a  man  like  Brentham  could  not  under- 
stand. His  face  was  thin  and  he  had  those  deep  ugly 
lines  around  the  mouth,  that  tightness  of  skin  over  the 
temples  and  jaw,  the  thin  lips  and  thin  hair,  aquiline 
nose,  and  thin  capable  hands  that  go  with  cruelty  and 
pitilessness.  But  that  women  did  run  after  him,  there 
was  no  denying ;  though  at  this  time  his  wife  was  shud- 
deringly  seeking  grounds  for  divorqe,_  or  at  any  rate 


SIBYL  AS  SIREN  269 

separation,  which  would  satisfy  a  male  judge  and  jury. 

Roger  enjoyed  the  shooting  with  rifle  and  shot-gun, 
and  his  dislike  of  Willowby  was  a  little  tempered  by 
the  latter's  unwilling  admiration  of  his  marksmanship. 
I  forget  whether  in  August-September  you  fish  for 
salmon  in  Scotland  with  a  rod  and  line,  but  if  so  you 
may  be  sure  Captain  Brentham,  to  whom  field  sports  of 
all  kinds  came  as  second  nature,  displayed  no  less 
prowess  in  that  direction.  Moreover  Willowby  tried 
to  be  civil  to  his  deputy  host  because  he  was  very  much 
drawn  to  big-game  shooting  in  East  Africa  and 
thought  Roger  could  put  him  up  to  the  right  place, 
right  time  of  year,  and  right  strings  to  pull. 

But  when  the  day's  sport  was  done  and  they  had 
bathed  and  changed  and  laid  themselves  out  for  a  jolly 
evening,  Roger  began  to  be  nervous  and  sensitive  about 
Lucy :  sometimes  to  wish  she  would  not  open  her 
mouth;  at  others  to  yearn  for  her  to  show  some  bril- 
liance in  conversation.  Her  little  naivetes  of  speech 
and  turns  of  phrase  which  seemed  so  amusing  and  even 
endearing  in  Africa,  or  to  an  admiring,  bucolic  audi- 
ence at  Aldermaston,  or  an  indulgent  sister-in-law  at 
Farleigh  Vicarage,  here  withered  into  imbecilities  un- 
der the  mocking  glance  or  the  bored  incomprehension 
of  Sibyl,  and  the  cool,  eyeglass  stare  of  Willowby 
Patterne.  Sibyl,  also,  was  afflicted  with  deafness  when 
Lucy  ventured  her  inquiries  at  breakfast  as  to  health 
or  the  state  of  the  weather. 

Out  of  fear  of  Queen  Victoria,  Sibyl  thought  to 
make  friends  at  Court  and  attest  at  the  same  time  the 
"  smallness  "  and  "  quietness  "of  her  house  party  by 
inviting  for  a  week  a  lady  of  the  Royal  Household 
who  was  off  duty  and  at  all  times  not  unwilling  to  eat 
well  and  sleep  softly  at  some  one  else's  expense.  But 
she,  also,  was  disconcerting  (though  no  doubt  a  pyra- 
mid of  flawless  chastity).  She  wore  a  single  eyeglass 
through  which  everything  and  everybody  was  scanned. 


270      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

At  first  she  was  disposed  to  be  very  much  interested 
in  Roger,  until  she  gathered  he  might  not  be  returning 
to  Africa.  She  had  friends  who  were  casting  in  their 
lots  with  Cecil  Rhodes's  ventures.  To  her  mental  vi- 
sion, Africa  was  about  the  size  of  an  English  county. 
A  man  in  East  Africa  ought  at  any  moment  to  run  up 
against  that  perfectly  delightful  creature,  Rhodes,  .  .  . 
"  the  dear  Queen  is  getting  so  interested  in  him  "... 
"  was  there  gold  by  the  bye  where  Captain  Brentham 
had  been  employed?"  But  when  she  learnt  that 
Sibyl's  cousin  was  probably  not  resuming  his  post 
there  and  that  this  very  dull,  oddly  dressed  woman  was 
not  Sibyl's  secretary  but  Roger's  wife,  a  former  mis- 
sionary in  East  Africa,  she  quietly  gave  them  both  up 
as  much  too  much  outside  her  own  track  through  life 
ever  to  be  of  use  or  interest  again. 

Another  guest  for  a  brief  time  was  the  Rev.  Stacy 
Bream.  Mr.  Bream  even  in  those  distant  days  was  not 
—  and  did  not  behave  like  —  the  conventional  clergy- 
man. He  was  the  incumbent  of  some  Chapel  Royal 
or  Chaplaincy  somewhere,  wholly  in  the  Royal  gift  and 
generally  bestowed  on  some  one  who  had  been  for  a 
brief  period  a  bear-leader  or  College  tutor  to  a  prince- 
ling going  through  a  make-believe  course  of  study  at 
Oxford  or  Cambridge.  Mr.  Bream,  in  order  to  take  a 
line  of  his  own,  plunged  boldly  into  the  world,  even  the 
half -world,  for  his  congregation  and  his  confidants. 
He  confessed  and  absolved  the  leading  ladies  of  the 
stage  when  they  reached  that  period  of  ripe  middle  age 
in  which  husbands  began  to  be  unfaithful  and  lovers 
shy  and  the  lady  herself  felt  just  the  slightest  dread  of 
a  hereafter.  He  came  forward  to  marry,  when  re- 
marriage was  legal  but  not  savoury  —  sooner  than  that 
the  poor  dears  should  live  in  sin.  He  dealt  —  I  dare 
say  very  kindly  and  considerately  —  with  scabrous 
cases  of  moral  downfall  that  no  one  else  would  touch. 
He  was  a  well-known  first-nighter  and  his  evening 


SIBYL  AS  SIREN  271 

dress  so  nearly  unclerical  that  you  might  have  been 
pardoned  for  not  spotting  him  at  once,  in  the  crush 
room,  for  a  parson,  and  he  would  have  been  the  first  to 
pardon  you.  He  always  went  where  Society  did  in 
order  to  be  able  at  once  to  render  first  aid  where  morals 
had  met  with  an  accident.  He  left  town  consequently 
in  time  for  the  grouse,  occasionally  handled  a  gun  — 
quite  skilfully  —  and  was  very  fond  of  games  of  chance 
in  the  evening  if  the  stakes  were  not  too  high. 

Bridge  had  not  then  reached  Great  Britain.  Where 
they  would  have  played  Bridge  ten  years  ago  they 
played  Baccarat,  or  Unlimited  Loo,  or  Nap,  or  Poker. 
Lucy  only  knew  "  Pope  Joan  "  and  had  a  horror  of 
losing  money  over  cards  and  no  capacity  for  mastering 
any  card  game,  not  even  Snip  Snap  Snorum.  The 
Rev.  Stacy  Bream  —  who  as  much  as  any  cleric  might, 
stood  in  lieu  of  a  Spiritual  director  to  Lady  Silchester 
—  called  Lucy  once  or  twice  "  My  dear  che-ild  "  and 
then  found  her  so  uninteresting  and  inexplicable  that 
he  ceased  to  study  her  any  more. 

So  Lucy  at  last,  in  dread  of  snubs  if  she  entered  the 
battledore  and  shuttlecock  conversation  or  of  revealing 
her  utter  ignorance  of  the  ways  of  smart  society,  fell 
silent  at  meal -times  and  after  meals.  When  the  others 
played  cards  or  roulette  on  a  miniature  green  table, 
she  would  read  a  book  in  a  corner  or  steal  away  up  to 
bed  before  the  maids  had  done  her  room  for  the  night. 
And  gradually  she  developed  the  red,  moist  nose  that 
comes  to  a  woman  who  cries  in  secret,  and  there  were 
wrought  other  changes  in  good  looks  and  figure  attend- 
ant on  her  condition.  And  then  one  day,  early  in  Sep- 
tember, Roger,  returning  to  his  dressing-room  for  a 
cigarette-case  and  to  ascertain  if  Lucy  was  ready  to 
start  on  an  excursion,  found  her  on  her  bedroom  sofa 
in  a  crisis  of  weeping.  Sibyl  had  summed  up  her 
makeshift  costume — for  a  day's  yachting  —  in  one 
short  phrase.  .  .  .  This  on  top  of  having  completely 


272      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

overlooked  her  existence  at  yesterday's  picnic  lunch, 
and  left  her  cupless  and  tealess  at  the  late  tea  which 
followed  their  return.  "  R  —  Ro  —  ger,  oh  dear 
Roger,  let  me  go  home!  I'm  only  in  every  one's  way 
here.  I  never  felt  so  stupid  in  my  life  before.  I  can't 
think  what's  the  matter  with  me  —  it's  the  feeling  they 
all  despise  me  —  and  —  and  —  pity  you  for  having 
made  a  fool  of  yourself.  Let  me  go  home  to  mother 
—  and  Maud!  .  .  ." 

Roger  consented  at  once.  He  felt  full  of  remorse 
and  pity,  promised  soon  to  join  her  in  the  south,  es- 
corted her  as  far  as  Carlisle,  and  arranged  that  kind 
Maud  should  meet  her  at  Euston  and  take  her  home  to 
Aldermaston.  The  others  were  too  utterly  uninter- 
ested in  her  to  listen  much  to  his  explanation  with  its 
discreet  allusion.  She  was  a  bore  and  a  wet  blanket 
out  of  the  way,  and  they  could  now  settle  down  to  enjoy 
themselves.  Sibyl,  to  keep  up  the  fiction  of  being  in 
mourning,  wore  black  and  absented  herself  from  most 
of  the  pleasure  outings ;  going  about  instead  alone  with 
Roger,  to  show  him  the  ins  and  outs  of  the  estate  and 
enable  him  to  formulate  plans  for  its  profitable  devel- 
opment. 

Early  in  October,  Captain  Brentham  saw  young 
Lord  Tarrington  (heir  to  the  Earldom  of  Pitching- 
ham)  and  precis-writer  to  Lord  Wiltshire).  He  was 
told  that  Lord  W.  had  given  careful  attention  to  his 
case.  His-  Lordship  thoroughly  appreciated  his  pains- 
taking work  for  a  year  or  more  as  Acting  Consul-Gen- 
eral,  but  thought  that  under  the  circumstances  it  was 
better  he  should  not  return  to  the  scene  of  his  former 
labours  on  the  mainland.  H.  L.,  however,  though  Cap- 
tain Brentham  had  scarcely  been  more  than  an  officer 
selected  for  special  service  in  Africa,  would  be  pleased 
to  consider  him  favourably  for  the  consular  posts  of 
Bergen  or  of  Baranquilla. 


SIBYL  AS  SIREN  273 

"I  suppose  you  know  where  Bergen  is?"  added 
Lord  Tarrington.  "  A  little  bit  near  the  North  Pole 
—  or  is  it  North  Cape?  I  always  mix  the  two.  But 
it's  in  Norway,  very  bracing  climate,  awfully  good  sea- 
fishing,  and  £350  a  year.  Or  if  you  prefer  heat,  there's 
Baranquilla,  northern  South  America,  not  a  good  cli- 
mate, but  the  last  man  stood  it  for  two  years  before  he 
succumbed  to  yellow  fever  .  .  .  and  it's  £550  a  year 
and  two  years  count  for  three  in  service.  Which  is  it 
to  be?  Make  up  your  mind  soon,  'cos  lots  of  fellows 
are  on  the  waiting  list  —  snap  at  either." 

Tarrington's  tone,  for  all  its  bluff  good  nature, 
sounded  final.  Roger  seeing  his  dreams  of  an  African 
empire  fade  in  that  dingy  room,  all  its  tones  having 
sombred  with  twenty  years'  fog  and  smoke  into  shades 
of  yellow  white  and  yellow  brown,  felt  at  first  inclined 
to  refuse  haughtily  either  consolation  for  the  loss  of 
Zangia.  But  a  married  man  and  prospective  father 
with  very  slight  resources  cannot  permit  himself  the 
luxury  of  ill-temper.  So  he  replied  civilly  that 
he  would  think  it  over  and  let  Lord  Tarrington 
know. 

As  he  left  the  first  floor  of  the  building  he  crossed  the 
path  of  the  august  Secretary  of  State  himself,  walking 
probably  round  the  quadrangle  to  the  India  Office. 
There  was  no  look  of  recognition  in  his  deep-set  eyes. 
How  different  from  two  and  a  half  years  ago  when  he 
had  been  hailed  by  this  statesman  as  an  authority  on 
East  Africa  far  better  worth  listening  to  than  Mr. 
Bennet  Molyneux,  now  noting  down  complacently  in 
his  room  below  the  fact  that  the  Consulate  at  Zangia 
with  its  seven  hundred  pounds  a  year  was  to  be  offered 
to  the  acting  man,  Mr.  Spencer  Bazzard. 

Brentham  went  down  that  evening  —  pretending  he 
didn't  care  in  the  least  for  this  definite  set-back  —  to 
Reading,  and,  chartering  a  fly,  drove  out  to  Engledene. 
A  rather  late  little  dinner  with  Sibyl  and  Aunt  Christa- 


2/4      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

bel  was  followed  by  a  long  consultation  with  Sibyl  in 
the  Library. 

Lady  Silchester's  plans  had  long  been  ready,  though 
she  seemed  to  develop  them  as  she  spoke.  "  Become 
my  agent,  Rodge-podge,  in  place  of  old  Parkins.  He's 
an  out-of-date  duffer.  I'll  either  pension  him  off,  or 
better  still  send  him  to  live  on  the  Staffordshire  prop- 
erty. He's  let  that  go  down  very  much;  it  ought  to 
yield  twice  its  present  rents.  I'll  give  you  £700  a 
year,  and  there'll  be  all  sorts  of  legitimate  pickings  as 
well.  You  can  have  the  Lodge  at  Englefield  to  live  in. 
I'll  do  it  up  for  you.  Lucy  can  live  there  and  go  on 
having  babies  for  the  next  ten  years.  I'm  sure  /  don't 
want  to  ask  her  to  dinner  or  to  anything  else,  if  she 
doesn't  want  to  come.  She  needn't  curtsy  to  me  if 
we  meet,  if  it's  that  she  dislikes.  .  .  . 

"  But  you've  great  abilities,  Roger.  You've  been 
shamefully  treated  by  Lord  W.  .  .  .  He's  always  tried 
to  snub  me  ...  /  don't  know  why  .  .  .  I'll  tell  you 
what.  I'll  run  you.  Alter  all,  I  am  a  rich  woman 
.  .  .  now.  You  shall  get  into  Parliament  .  .  .  and 
be  a  great  Imperialist,  as  that  seems  to  be  going  to 
become  the  fashion.  What  .  .  .  what  .  .  .  WHAT  a 
pity  you  married  like  that,  all  in  a  hurry!  And  you 
see  it's  done  you  no  good  with  the  Nonconformist 
conscience  and  those  stuffy  old  things  at  the  F.O. 
However,  it's  no  good  crying  over  spilt  milk.  I'll 
make  a  career  for  you !  "  And  she  looked  at  him  with 
shining  eyes,  betraying  her  palpable  secret.  .  .  . 

"This  is  awfully  good  of  you,  Syb,"  said  Roger, 
not  meeting  her  look.  "  But  do  you  think  it  is  fair  on 

others?     Why  not  put  in  your  father ?     Or  one 

of  your  brothers?  " 

"Rubbish!  Dad  would  make  just  as  great  a  mess 
of  the  Silchester  estates  —  only  on  a  far  bigger  scale  — 
as  he  is  doing  over  his  three  hundred  acres  at  Alder- 
maston.  I  think  we'll  send  him  up  to  care-take  at 


SIBYL  AS  SIREN  275 

Glen  Sporran  and  make  him  sell  up  the  Aldermaston 
place.  Helping  him  with  loans  is  like  pouring  money 
into  —  what  do  you  pour  it  into  when  it  runs  away  ? 
A  sieve?  And  the  two  boys  have  both  got  jobs  and 
are  none  too  bright,  at  that.  Besides,  it's  no  fun 
working  with  brothers,  and  I'm  going  to  throw  myself 
heart  and  soul  into  the  development  of  the  Estate. 
It'll  be  ...  it'll  be  ...  what's  two  and  a  third  from 
twenty-one?  Well,  at  any  rate,  more  than  eighteen 
years  before  Clithy  comes  of  age.  In  that  time  we'll 
have  raised  the  annual  value  of  the  property  to  twice 
what  it  is  now,  and  incidentally  we'll  have  a  glorious 
time,  influencing  people,  don't  you  know,  getting  up  a 
new  opposition  in  Parliament,  and  making  ourselves 
felt.  .  .  ." 

"  Well,  in  any  case,  it's  awfully  good  of  you  .  .  . 
awfully  .  .  .  somehow  I  don't  deserve  it.  .  .  .'' 

"  You  don't,  after  the  way  you  threw  me  over.  But 
stick  to  me  now,  through  thick  and  thin,  and  " —  she 
was  going  to  have  added  impulsively,  "  Oh,  Roger,  I  do 
love  you,  I  can't  help  it,"  and  perhaps  have  flung  her- 
self on  to  a  sofa  with  a  burst  of  hysterical  tears  to  salve 
all  his  scruples,  but  quickly  thought  better  of  this  and 
added  rather  tamely,  "  And  we'll  make  a  great  suc- 
cess of  our  partnership.  And  now  we  must  go  and 
play  backgammon  or  bezique  or  something  with  Aunt 
Christabel,  or  she  will  come  poking  her  nose  in  here  to 
see  what  we're  up  to.  How  tiresome  the  old  are !  It's 
only  on  account  of  what  the  Queen  would  say  that  I 
keep  her  on  here.  She  thinks  you're  '  dangerous  '  to 
my  peace  of  mind,  Roger.  But  if  I  had  mother  here 
instead  she  would  be  equally  boring,  and  father  can't 
bear  to  be  separated  from  her,  and  the  two  of  them 
would  be  unthinkable." 

Though  some  instinct  told  Roger  Sibyl's  scheme 
would  never  work,  without  damage  to  his  peace  of 
mind  and  his  conjugal  relations,  he  felt  her  Circe  in- 


276      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

fluence  already.  He  accepted  her  offer  —  at  any  rate 
for  one  year.  At  the  end  of  that  time  she  and  he 
should  be  free  to  cancel  the  arrangement.  He  decided 
for  the  present  to  lodge  with  his  wife's  parents  and  ride 
backwards  and  forwards  till  Lucy  had  had  her  baby. 
At  the  utmost  he.  would  have  a  bedroom  at  the  Lodge 
and  the  Parkinses  —  Mrs.  Parkins,  at  any  rate  — 
should  not  vacate  it  definitely  till  Lucy  was  able  to  set 
up  house  there.  He  wrote  civilly  but  briefly  to  Lord 
Tarrington  declining  to  go  either  to  Norway  or  to  Co- 
lombia, and  resigned  "  with  much  regret  "  his  commis- 
sion for  Zangia. 

About  this  time  he  received  two  letters  which  gave 
him  much  to  think  about,  but  which  he  put  at  the  back 
of  his  mind.  I  will  give  the  shortest  first :  — 

To  Captain  Brentham,  F.R.G.S., 
H.B.M.  Consul  for  Zangia. 

School  of  Mines, 

Jermyn  Street,  S.W. 

October  5,  1889. 
DEAR  SIR, — 

You  will  remember  calling  here  in  last  July,  just 
before  I  took  my  holiday. 

You  left  with  me  for  examination  a  series  of  rock 
specimens  and  some  sediment  of  lake  water  from  East 
Africa. 

Of  the  rock  specimens,  at  least  six  give  indications 
of  great  interest.  Those  two  labelled  "  Iraku  I  "  and 
"  Iraku  II  "  are  so  rich  in  gold  that  their  importance 
must  have  been  apparent  to  yourself  —  unless  you  mis- 
took the  gold  for  iron  pyrites,  an  inverse  of  the  cus- 
tomary deception,  which  is  generally  the  other  way 
about.  The  specimen  labelled  "  Marasha  "  is  simply 
coal  —  rather  shaley  coal,  probably  a  surface  fragment. 
There  are  two  specimens,  unfortunately  with  their 


SIBYL  AS  SIREN  277 

labels  missing  or  indecipherable,  which  are  a  hard 
bluish  green  serpentine  rock,  obviously  related  to  the 
"  blue  ground  "  of  South  Africa  and  probably  dia- 
mondiferous.  A  fifth  specimen  yields  evidence  of 
wolframite,  and  in  three  other  samples  there  is  much 
mica.  The  lake  sediment  is  being  further  examined 
by  a  colleague  of  mine.  He  believes  it  to  be  an  indi- 
cation of  the  formation  of  phosphates  in  the  lake  bed 
or  shores  which  should  be  of  great  importance  to  agri- 
culture as  a  constituent  of  chemical  manure.  These 
phosphates  might  be  derived  from  birds'  dung  in  great 
quantities,  from  guano  in  fact. 

I  assume  you  have  duly  registered  the  exact  geo- 
graphical localities  of  these  specimens?  Otherwise, 
they  are  very  tantalizing,  for  they  evidently  indicate  — 
if  they  come  from  one  region  and  not  from  a  wide  area 
of  travel  —  one  of  the  wealthiest  of  African  terri- 
tories. 

Pursuant  to  your  wish,  however,  I  shall  treat  the 
matter  as  confidential.  But  if  you  can  at  any  time 
supply  me  with  the  exact  geographical  information  I 
require  I  shall  be  pleased  to  write  a  report  on  the  col- 
lection for  the  Petrographical  Society  or  for  the  confi- 
dential information  of  the  Government :  whichever  you 
prefer. 

Yours  faithfully, 
DANIEL  RUTTER. 

Unguja, 

August  26,  1889. 
DEAR  CAPTAIN  BRENTHAM, — 

Mrs.  Stott  and  I,  we  thank  you  very  heartily  for 
your  kind  remembrances  of  us.  The  generous  present 
of  tea  you  sent  us  as  soon  as  you  got  back  to  England 
reached  our  good  friend  Callaway  a  little  while  ago  and 
I  found  it  here  waiting  for  us  when  I  arrived  from  the 
interior. 


278      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

Captain  Wissmann  has  had  a  wonderful  series  of 
victories  over  the  Arabs  and  Wangwana,  which  in  the 
good  providence  of  God  have  cleared  the  way  between 
Ugogo  and  the  coast.  I  heard  something  of  this  in 
the  Happy  Valley  last  April;  so,  as  we  were  running 
terribly  short  of  supplies  and  as  we  felt  "  seed  time 
was  come  "  and  that  the  Lord  desired  us  to  reopen  our 
Burungi  Station,  and  establish  his  tabernacle  strongly 
in  this  glorious  place  —  Manyara  — "  ripe  unto  har- 
vest "•  -  I  felt  my  way  cautiously  up  the  Valley  and 
through  the  Irangi  country  to  Burungi.  The  place  was 
not  any  worse  treated  than  when  you  left  it  —  you 
made  a  great  impression  on  the  Wagogo  —  so,  as  their 
elders  begged  me  to  rebuild  the  station  I  left  some  of 
our  trained  workers  to  do  so.  Besides  that,  Captain 
Wissmann,  whom  we  met  near-by,  has  lent  us  two  Ger- 
man sergeants  —  biddable  men  and  clever  with  their 
hands.  They'd  been  sick,  and  wounded  in  the  legs  and 
he  said  it  would  do  them  good  to  have  a  spell  of  quiet 
sedentary  life.  He  also  put  under  their  orders  a  guard 
of  five  Sudanese  soldiers  to  guard  the  station  whilst  it 
is  being  rebuilt.  So  here  I  am  at  the  coast,  chopping 
yarns  with  Mr.  Callaway,  and  laying  in  great  supplies 
which  I  have  been  able  to  buy  out  of  the  price  of  that 
ivory  you  shot  for  us. 

Captain  Brentham,  you  don't  know  what  a  mine  of 
wealth  the  Happy  Valley  is,  and  the  cliffs  and  moun- 
tains on  the  western  side  (Iraku  and  Ilamba).  I  am 
an  Australian,  and  before  I  found  Christ  I  had  a 
course  of  instruction  as  a  mining  engineer.  The  rocks 
in  and  about  the  Happy  Valley  tell  me  at  first  sight 
more  than  they  would  an  ordinary  Englishman.  I  sup- 
pose some  one  will  have  to  find  out  this,  sooner  or  later. 
I'd  much  sooner  it  were  you.  You  may  yet  get  it 
taken  over  by  Great  Britain.  At  any  rate,  if  you  came 
out  here  and  prospected  you  would  see  what  I  mean. 


SIBYL  AS  SIREN  279 

What  did  you  do  with  the  specimens  you  took  away 
with  you  for  analysis?  Did  you  lose  them  on  your 
way  to  the  coast?  Maybe  if  the  Happy  Valley  is  to 
come  under  the  Germans  they  would  give  you  a  conces- 
sion. This  Captain  Wissmann  seems  to  like  you,  and 
he  said  it  was  far  from  his  Government's  intention  to 
drive  away  English  missionaries  or  English  capital. 
He  likes  the  English  very  much  and  speaks  English 
very  well. 

I  only  write  this  because  they  say  here  you  are  not 
coming  back  as  Consul.  I  am  sorry.  Why  not  then 
come  out  on  your  own?  I've  opened  your  letter  to 
Mrs.  Stott,  which  came  with  the  tea,  and  right  glad  I 
was  to  hear  —  and  so  will  she  be  —  that  you'd  married 
poor  Lucy  Baines.  Right  glad.  Bring  her  out  here 
with  you,  and  Mrs.  Stott  shall  look  after  her  whilst 
you  go  round  prospecting  and  staking  out  your  claims. 

We  may  not  see  eve  to  eye  over  the  Lord's  work. 
The  Lord  hasn't  revealed  himself  to  you  yet  as  He  has 
to  us.  He  will  in  His  own  good  time.  But  you've 
got  the  root  of  the  matter  in  you.  I  never  yet  met 
an  unbeliever  who  was  so  reverent  and  so  tender  of 
other  people's  beliefs.  .  .  .  You're  a  good  man,  if 
you'll  forgive  my  saying  so.  You  wouldn't  ever  in- 
terfere with  our  work  here,  I  know.  It's  getting  on 
grand.  We  baptized  the  Chief  of  the  Wambugwe  and 
fifty  of  his  men  in  the  Lake  at  Manyara  just  before 
you  left,  and  please  God,  we've  saved  the  whole  valley 
from  Islam. 

Mrs.  Stott  had  always  a  first-class  opinion  of  you, 
though  you  weren't  of  our  way  of  thinking  in  religion. 
She  is  sure  you'll  always  stand  up  for  the  natives  and 
protect  their  rights.  I  hope  I  haven't  been  taking  a 
liberty,  writing  this  letter.  If  you  don't  like  to  come 
out  yourself,  any  one  you  sent  we  should  trust  to  do  the 
right  thing  and  would  show  him  round.  Otherwise, 


28o      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

we  have  been  careful  to  say  nothing  about  the  Happy 
Valley,  and  so  far  no  Arabs  and  no  Germans  have 
troubled  us. 

May  God's  blessing  rest  on  you  and  on  your  sorely 
tried  wife.  I  feel  sure  there  are  happier  days  in  store 
for  her. 

Your  sincere  friend  —  if  you'll  allow  me  to  say  so. 

JAMES  EWART  STOTT. 

In  regard  to  the  School  of  Mines  Report,  Roger  for 
acquitment  of  conscience  and  because  he  always  liked 
to  do  the  right  thing,  sent  a  resume  of  Professor 
Rutter's  analysis  to  the  P.O.,  stating  that  the  speci- 
mens referred  to  had  been  picked  up  by  him  on  his 
recent  tour  through  the  interior  of  German  East  Africa. 

In  reply,  the  Under  Secretary  of  State  Was  directed 
to  thank  Captain  Brentham  for  this  valuable  informa- 
tion. 

In  reality  it  was  decided  to  pigeon-hole  the  report, 
certainly  to  give  it  no  publicity.  Let  the  Germans 
find  out  for  themselves  the  value  of  their  territories. 
If  they  discovered  they  had  bitten  off  more  than  they 
could  chew,  why  .  .  .  then.  .  .  . 

In  January,  1890,  Lucy  was  delivered  of  a  son. 
Roger  was  hugely  delighted.  When  he  asked  Lucy  a 
week  after  the  birth  if  she  had  any  preference  for  a 
name  —  her  father's,  his  father's,  his  own  —  she  said 
in  a  faint  voice  but  with  some  finality  in  the  accent : 
"  Let  him  be  called  '  John  ' !  "  Then,  as  he  did  not 
reply,  she  added,  "  John  loved  me  and  I  wasn't  worthy 
of  his  love.  .  .  ." 

"Well,  and  don't  /  love  you?"  answered  Roger 
with  a  tinge  of  compunction. 

"  She's  a  bit  wandery  in  her  mind,  sir,"  said  the 
nurse.  "  Don't  pay  any  attention  to  what  she's  a 
saying.  She's  mistook  your  name.  Several  times 


SIBYL  AS  SIREN  281 

since  the  baby  was  born  she's  seemed  to  be  talking  with 
a  John,  but  it  was  you  she  was  a  thinkin'  about,  I'll 
be  bound.  She  wants  keeping  very  quiet.  .  .  ." 

Once  Captain  Brentham  took  up  the  affairs  of  the 
Silchester  estates  —  which  he  did  definitely  in  October, 
1889,  he  went  very  thoroughly  into  their  condition 
and  their  possibilities  of  development.  He  was  not, 
of  course,  a  trained,  professional  land  agent,  which 
was  why  his  shrewd  and  original  ideas  of  enhancing 
the  value  and  productivity  of  land  made  the  Institute 
of  Land  Agents  so  angry.  But  he  knew  something  of 
surveying,  and  had  been  accustomed  to  value  countries 
by  the  eye,  to  judge  of  soils,  espy  defects  in  farming, 
by  his  boyish  life  at  Farleigh  and  his  experiences  in 
India  and  Africa. 

Lord  Silchester  in  his  fondness  for  landscape  beauty 
had  preferred  a  lovely,  unkempt,  autumn-wistful  wil- 
derness to  a  possible  brick-field,  though  to  a  geologist 
the  clay  was  almost  crying  out  to  be  turned  to  the  serv- 
ice of  man.  He  liked  great  spaces  without  a  sign  of 
man's  habitation  to  mar  the  poem.  Roger,  though  he 
had  a  strongly  developed  sense  of  the  beautiful  in  Na- 
ture, yet  combined  with  it  a  realization  that  much 
waste  land  in  the  England  of  latter  days,  and  even  in 
Scotland,  is  an  offence  and  a  temptation  to  discontent 
on  the  part  of  the  landless.  Another  charm  can  be 
contributed  to  landscapes  by  the  handiwork  of  man; 
provided  the  cottage  is  tastefully  and  soundly  built, 
the  manufactory  —  even  the  brick-kilns  and  chimneys 
—  are  of  the  right  material  for  the  neighbourhood,  of 
harmonious  colour  and  appropriate  design. 

In  the  Berkshire  and  Hampshire  estates,  woodlands 
required  thinning,  cattle  wanted  new  blood  and  better 
breeding.  The  lobster  fishery  at  Sporran  Bay  should 
certainly  be  developed.  A  proportion  of  the  deer  in 
Scotland  and  at  Engledene  might  with  advantage  be 


282      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

sold.  The  farmer  tenants  generally  wanted  shaking 
up.  Some  of  them  could  well  afford  to  pay  twice  their 
present  rent  and  let  him  out  of  the  increased  rent-roll 
rebuild  their  houses,  barns,  granaries,  pigsties  and 
cow-sheds.  Why,  the  dairy  business  alone  might  be 
trebled  in  value  with  this  proximity  of  a  milk-hungry 
London.  Farmer  Josling,  a  right-down  superior  man 
with  much  self-given  education,  should  help  him  in 
this.  Incidentally,  with  Sibyl's  consent,  he  had  given 
his  father-in-law  a  life-lease  of  his  farm  as  some  ac- 
knowledgment of  his  excellent  use  of  it,  and  his  pro- 
gressive influence  on  the  other  farmers. 

The  bracing  outdoor  life  and  constant  riding,  the 
hunting  and  shooting  did  his  health  a  world  of  good. 
He  had  never  looked  so  well,  so  set  up  and  robust  as  he 
did  at  the  age  of  thirty-two,  as  Sibyl's  factotum.  The 
worst  of  this  was  that  he  seemed  more  desirable  than 
ever  in  Sibyl's  eyes,  as  she  admitted  with  her  disarm- 
ing frankness.  "  What  a  pity  it  is,  Roger,  the  silly 
laws  of  this  sanctimonious  country  will  not  permit 
polygamy.  We  are  just  in  the  prime  of  life,  you  and 
I.  I  am  much  better  looking  than  I  was  ten  years 
ago  —  I  shudder  at  my  old  photographs  —  I  wore  a 
fringe  then  and  a  bustle,  and  a  lot  of  hair  down  my 
back,  and  a  terrible  simper  when  I  faced  the  camera. 
It's  a  crime  against  Nature  that  we  can't  marry.  We 
should  have  the  handsomest  children  and  we  could 
easily  arrange  matters  with  Lucy.  She's  not  exact- 
ing." 

Roger  laughed  at  these  speeches,  but  they  made  him 
a  little  uncomfortable.  Had  Sibyl  been  a  complete 
stranger  to  him  he  might  have  succumbed  long  before 
to  her  wiles;  few  men  of  his  build,  his  time,  his  com- 
plexion were  Josephs.  But  the  slight  relationship  be- 
tween them  acted  as  a  barrier  to  concupiscence.  It 
permitted  a  familiarity  in  speech  and  address  which 


SIBYL  AS  SIREN  283 

made  any  closer  intimacy  repellent  to  his  sense  of 
decency.  .  .  . 

Sibyl,  it  must  be  admitted,  was  shameless  when  they 
were  together.  She  would  study  his  features  atten- 
tively; admire  the  curl  of  his  eyelashes,  the  outline  of 
his  profile,  even  the  not  quite  classical  prominence  of 
the  cheek  bones,  the  virile  twist  upwards  of  his  mous- 
tache, the  firm  chin  and  strong  white  teeth,  the  well- 
set  ear  and  close-cropped  hair  at  the  back  of  his  head : 
the  while  she  pretended,  pen  in  hand,  to  be  consider- 
ing his  propositions.  Thought-transference  told  him 
what  this  scrutiny  meant,  and  he  would  colour  a  little 
in  shame  and  become  abrupt  in  manner  —  even  say  to 
himself,  "This  can't  go  on  —  I  wish  she'd  think  of 
something  else.  .  .  ." 

He  was  conscientiously  attentive  to  Lucy  at  this 
time  and  she  was  really  'happy  during  this  phase  in 
Roger's  life.  In  the  spring  she  took  up  her  residence 
in  the  Lodge  at  Englefield  and  made  a  comfortable 
home  for  her  devoted  husband,  who  seemed  resolved 
to  show  her  how  happy  he  was  in  his  marriage. 
Maud,  from  Farleigh,  was  a  constant  visitor,  stayed 
weeks  together  with  Lucy  and  Roger  and  served  as  a 
trait  d' union  with  Sibyl,  who  allowed  Maud  to  chaff 
her  and  scold  her  as  she  would  no  one  else.  Sibyl  was 
quite  civil  to  Lucy,  did  not  bother  her,  left  her  alone 
except  for  an  occasional  greeting  and  the  showing  of 
some  curiosity  as  to  little  John.  "  You  may  call  him 
John  as  much  as  you  like,  but  he's  certainly  Roger's 
child." 

Clithy  and  his  nurse  were  often  sent  down  to  the 
Lodge  to  be  with  Lucy :  Sibyl  deigning  to  say  that  her 
influence  over  children  was  a  good  one  and  Clithy  was 
never  fretful  with  her.  In  her  mocking  moods  she 
called  her  little  son  "  The  Prince  with  the  Nose  "  and 
declared  he  was  und^r  *v\  enchantment.  He  had  for 


284      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

a  child  of  three  a  preternaturally  large  nose,  and,  as 
she  said  to  Roger,  there  could  be  no  doubt  as  to  his 
paternity.  "  How  pleased  Francis  would  have  been ! 
He  was  always  so  proud  of  the  Mallard  nose.  Said  it 
could  be  traced  back  in  pictures  to  Charles  I's  reign  — 
Anne  of  Denmark,  who  was  rather  larky  after  she  had 
been  married  ten  years,  had  a  side-slip  —  you  know 
what  a  tipsy  court  they  were !  —  and  bore  a  daughter 
to  the  Lord  Chamberlain,  who  was  particularly  active 
in  the  revels.  James  overlooked  her  breach  of  good 
manners  and  ultimately  gave  the  large-nosed  little  girl 
in  marriage  with  Silchester  Manor  to  a  favourite,  who 
founded  the  House  of  Mallard.  Francis  was  going 
to  have  put  this  into  his  Memoirs,  but  he  died,  poor 
dear,  leaving  them  three-quarters  finished.  I  think  7 
shall  finish  them  for  a  lark.  Will  you  help  me?  " 

One  reason  why  Lucy  was  dreamily  happy  at  Engle- 
field  Lodge  was  that  she  seemed  there  to  link  up  with 
the  life  of  her  girlhood.  She  had  so  often  strolled 
round  the  precincts  of  Engledene  with  John  Tile- 
hurst,  she  dared  not  revisit  for  fear  of  meeting  Mrs. 
Baines.  But  she  would  sometimes  walk  over  the  same 
path  she  had  traced  with  John  on  that  Sunday  in  June, 
1886.  She  would  sit  on  the  seat  at  The  View  and  go 
over  once  more  in  memory,  and  with  a  sad  little  smile, 
her  naive  and  petulant  questions  and  answers  on  that 
Sunday  walk.  How  she  had  told  John  her  desire  to 
encounter  lions,  and  yet  when  a  lion  had  visited  their 
camp,  what  abject  terror  she  had  shown !  Hangodi ! 
That  name  was  first  uttered  to  her  in  Engledene  Park 
and  she  remembered  John  saying  it  meant  "  The  Place 
of  Firewood." 

One  day  Roger  brought  over  to  see  her  in  the  dog- 
cart old  Mr.  Baines  —  as  he  was  beginning  to  be  called. 
They  both  shed  a  few  tears,  but  he  told  her  with  more 
sincerity  than  he  usually  put  into  his  husky  voice  that 


SIBYL  AS  SIREN  285 

he  exonerated  her  from  all  blame  in  the  catastrophe 
which  had  overtaken  his  son  (Lucy  herself  was  not  so 
sure).  "  Mother's  taken  it  awfully  bad,  Lucy.  She's 
goin'  out  of  her  mind,  I'm  fearin'.  First  she  was 
writin'  an'  writin'  to  Lord  Wiltshire,  him  as  is  Prime 
Minister,  don't  you  know,  to  give  your  husband  the 
sack  as  bein'  the  real  cause  of  John's  death.  Then 
next  she'd  bother  our  member,  wantin'  'im  to  ask  ques- 
tions in  the  'Ouse  of  Commons,  till  at  last  they  give 
up  answerin'  them.  Then  she  set  to  and  slanged  that 
Missionary  Society  that  John  belonged  to,  sayin'  they 
wasn't  'alf  careful  enough  about  'is  precious  life. 
Now  this  spring,  blessed  if  she  ain't  cut  our  Con- 
nexion !  She  won't  go  to  Salem  Chapel ;  goes  to 
Church  instead  ...  St.  Michael's.  Shouldn't  won- 
der if  she  ended  up  a  papist!  .  .  .  S'pose  you  know 
Ann's  in  England?  They're  makin'  a  lot  of  fuss 
about  'er  in  Reading  and  London.  Call  her  a  Heroine. 
She's  bin  down  with  'er  'usband  —  rather  a  half-baked 
feller  —  to  see  us ;  but  'er  talk  with  Mother  ain't  done 
Mother  much  good,  partly  'cos  Ann  wouldn't  join  'er  in 
abusin'  you.  She  says  to  Mother :  '  I  just  told  you 
the  plain  truth  in  that  letter.  I'm  not  goin'  to  add  nor 
subtract  one  word,  an'  you've  gone  and  put  into  it  much 
more  than  I  ever  said.  Just  leave  Lucy  alone  to  God's 
judgment.  At  any  rate,  John  loved  her  and  died  be- 
lievin'  her  true;  and  I  dessay  she  was.  Africa's  a 
funny  country  and  you  must  put  down  a  lot  to  the  cli- 
mate.' .  .  .  Ann's  going  back  to  Africa  next  autumn, 
with  three  more  recruits  and  a  lot  of  money  to  spend  on 
the  Mission  School.  Old  Mrs.  Doland  sent  for  'er  and 
give  'er  five  hundred  pounds.  I  tell  'er  she  ought  to 
come  and  see  you  before  she  goes.  P'raps  she  will, 
p'raps  she  won't.  I  told  'er  you  called  your  baby 
'  John,'  and  the  tears  reg'lar  came  into  'er  eyes.  .  .  ." 
Roger  owned  to  Maud  he  felt  a  bit  restless  in  the 
spring  and  early  summer  of  1890.  He  couldn't  get 


286      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

Africa  out  of  his  mind,  somehow.  There  was  first  the 
fuss  about  Stanley  and  the  return  of  the  Emm  Pasha 
Relief  Expedition  —  surely  one  of  the  most  wasted 
feats  of  heroism  and  brave  endeavour  in  the  history  of 
Africa.  Then  came  the  1890  Agreement  with  Ger- 
many. This  left  the  Happy  Valley  pretty  much  where 
it  had  lain  —  unmarked  as  yet  —  on  the  map,  but  by 
approximate  latitude  and  longitude  entirely  German, 
as  Roger  knew.  But  the  discussion  of  frontiers  in 
Africa  caused  him  to  feel  fretful  and  resentful  at  being 
"  out  of  it."  Sir  Mulberry  Hawk,  who  had  negotiated 
the  treaty,  might  surely  have  turned  to  him  for  en- 
lightenment on  this  point  and  that?  Even  though  he 
had  left  the  African  Service,  there  were  his  reports 
of  1884-5  and  -6,  and  of  1887-9.  He  felt  impelled 
to  go  and  see  Broadmead,  always  accessible  to  men  of 
worth.  Broadmead  said  it  was  a  beastly  shame  — 
spite  perhaps  on  the  part  of  Molyneux  —  but  every 
one  now  was  thinking  of  the  Recess.  .  .  .  London  was 
becoming  awfully  stale.  .  .  .  He  and  Roger  should 
meet  in  the  early  autumn.  Broadmead  would  perhaps 
come  down  to  Engledene  and  shoot  Sibyl's  pheasants, 
and  talk  over  Africa.  ...  If  Roger  was  still  hanker- 
ing after  East  Africa,  why  didn't  he  suck  up  to  "  Wully 
MacNaughten  ?  "  He  had  a  show  place  somewhere 
up  in  the  Highlands,  not  an  immeasurable  distance 
from  Glen  Sporran. 

"Who  was  Wully?  Didn't  Brentham  know? 
Why,  he  had  begun  life  as  a  small  grocer  in  some 
Scotch  town,  and  bankrupted  through  giving  credit  to 
the  crofters.  Not  to  be  bested  by  Fate,  he  went  out 
to  China  as  a  clerk  and  in  twenty  years  had  made  quite 
a  respectable  fortune.  Friends  said  out  of  tea,  ene- 
mies out  of  opium,  smuggled  into  India;  probable 
cause,  the  great  coolie  traffic  between  China  and  the 
rest  of  the  world,  which  prompted  him  to  found  a 
navy  of  tramp  steamers  to  carry  the  coolies,  many  of 


SIBYL  AS  SIREN  287 

them  over  to  Africa.  Then  he  nibbled  at  East  Africa ; 
began  with  missionary  stations,  sort  of  atonement, 
don't  you  know,  for  anything  naughty  he'd  done  — 
Chaps  in  China  used  to  call  him  '  MacNaughty- 
naughty  ' —  s'posed  to  have  had  a  half-caste  family. 
Not  a  word  of  truth  in  it.  However,  there  it  was, 
and  he  couldn't  go  on  refreshing  Brentham's  memory. 
Brentham  had  been  in  East  Africa  and  must  know  all 
about  MacNaughten  there?  .  .  ." 

"  Why,  yes,  I  know,  of  course,  he's  the  Chairman  of 
the  Chartered  Company  of  Ibea  —  Mvita,  you  know." 

"  Well,  they  are  going  to  extend  their  operations 
inland  to  the  Victoria  Nyanza  and  they  want  a  go- 
ahead  man  as  Governor.  The  chap  at  present  out 

there  is However,  nothing  can  be  done  now. 

See  you  later  on,  give  you  a  letter  to  him.  .  .  .  Tata." 

If  Roger  was  restless  with  una vowed  hankerings 
after  his  first  mistress,  Africa,  Sibyl,  unconscious  that 
he  ever  dreamed  of  release  from  her  Circe  toils,  was 
radiant  in  the  spring  and  summer  of  that  particularly 
radiant  year,  1890.  Her  prescribed  mourning  was 
over,  so  that  the  "  horrid  old  Queen  "  could  have  no 
ground  of  objection  to  her  entertaining  like  any  other 
opulent  peeress. 

Roger  had  worked  wonders  with  the  estates,  and 
before  long  the  revenues,  over  which  she  would  have 
control  till  her  son's  majority,  would  be  increased  by 
at  least  one-third.  Her  choice  of  him  from  a  business 
point  of  view  was  amply  justified.  Her  pulse  quick- 
ened and  her  eyes  grew  brighter  than  their  ordinary 
at  the  thought  he  might  some  day  be  her  lover.  If 
only  that  tiresome  Lucy  died  in  one  of  her  confine- 
ments, he  might  even  be  her  husband.  Of  course,  she 
would  most  carefully  avoid  any  foolishness  which 
might  give  the  least  ground  for  scandal.  If  she  did 
that;  she  could  take  life  as  pleasantly  as  Lady  Rams- 
gate  (the  ridiculous  one,  called  "Popsy"),  or  Lady 


288      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

Ann  Vizor.  Every  one  knew  that  Popsy  Ramsgate 
had  had  a  child  by  her  farm  bailiff  and  kept  it  at  the 
farm,  and  no  one  thought  the  worse  of  her.  Ramsgate 
was  dead.  Lady  Ann's  stockbroker  was  obviously  her 
lover,  but  he  was  very  gentlemanly  and  no  one  would 
have  guessed  unless  they  had  been  specially  told. 

Even  if  Roger  were  free,  she  was  not  sure  she 
wanted  exactly  to  marry  him.  She  would  then  lose 
her  title  or,  at  any  rate,  her  social  rights  as  a  peeress. 
And  Roger  as  husband  might  be  too  masterful.  She 
wanted  to  "  queen  it "  as  a  rich  woman  with  intelli- 
gence and  taste  might  do  in  those  days.  Now  her 
mourning  was  over  she  would  commence  at  once  to 
give  parties  at  6A,  Carlton  House  Terrace,  which 
should  put  those  of  Suzanne  Feenix  quite  in  the  shade. 
She  would  create  a  salon,  to  which  should  be  attracted 
the  younger  bloods,  the  rebels  of  the  Conservative 
Party.  She  would  revivify  Lord  Randolph,  join 
hands  with  Mary  March,  who  had  a  wonderful  Hair 
for  inveigling  millionaires.  She  and  a  few  other 
clever  women  —  the  Tennants,  perhaps  —  should  cre- 
ate a  young  and  intellectual  Conservative  Party  —  or 
Unionist  Party,  if  you  liked.  They  would  get  hold  of 
Choselwhit  —  perhaps  Rhodes,  if  he  came  to  England. 

Lord  Wiltshire  should  rue  the  day  that  he  had 
snubbed  her  at  a  Chapelmead  week-end  —  the  last  time 
poor  Francis  went  out  anywhere  —  and  cut  her  at  two 
Foreign  Office  receptions.  The  Brinsleys  should  be 
shown  their  reign  was  over. 

Her  initiates  —  she  really  founded  the  half-legend- 
ary "  Souls  " —  should  include  the  smartest  writers  and 
the  most  daring  painters,  the  weirdest  poets  of  the 
day.  They  would  have  their  own  press,  if  it  wasn't 
too  expensive,  but  Mary  March's  millionaires  might 
manage  that  .  .  .  hadn't  she  been  introduced  at  one  of 
Mary's  theatre  parties  to  an  enormously  rich  and  hum- 
ble person  called  Tooley  ?  Lady  Tarrington  had  asked 


SIBYL  AS  SIREN  289 

him  if  he  owned  Tooley  Street  and  the  stupid  creature 
had  said:  "Beg  pardon,  me  lady?"  Well,  Tooley 
should  be  ensorcelled  —  perhaps  an  invitation  up  to 
Glen  Sporran  —  and  buy  their  newspaper  for  them. 

And  then  she  had  an  idea  of  starting  a  monthly 
Review  which  she  would  edit  herself  and  which  should 
tell  the  naked  truth.  No  squeamishness.  .  .  .  Praed, 
the  architect,  should  send  them  one  or  two  of  his 
queer  storiettes.  .  .  . 

As  to  mother  and  father,  they  would  spoil  any  cir- 
cles with  their  banalities  and  old-fashioned  ideas  .  .  . 
and  father's  stories  would  never  be  followed  to  their 
finish  by  the  modern  young  man  or  woman.  They 
would  devastate  her  circle.  No.  They  must  stop  in 
the  country.  Mother  seemed  to  be  developing  some 
internal  complaint  —  probably  indigestion  or  some- 
thing which  could  be  cured  at  Aix  or  Homburg  —  and 
she  was  becoming  very  strait-laced  and  anxious-eyed. 
Sibyl  would  take  Roger's  advice :  buy  up  father's  three 
hundred  acres ;  it  could  be  made  a  most  profitable  milk 
farm.  Father  should  stay  on  as  tenant  at  a  nominal 
rent,  with  a  bailiff  to  manage  —  perhaps  that  young 
Marden,  the  cricketer,  who  had  married  Lucy's  sister. 

Sibyl  resolved  to  send  mother  to  Aix  at  her  expense 
and  have  Aunt  Christabel  to  stay  with  her  indefinitely 
as  long  as  she  wanted  a  chaperon. 

As  to  her  sisters :  thank  goodness,  they  were  off  her 
hands.  They  had  married  and  gone  away  with  their 
husbands  to  those  blessed  colonies,  Clara  to  New  Zea- 
land and  Juliet  to  British  Columbia.  Long  might 
they  remain  there !  Relations  —  unless  very  distant 
—  were  like  reproaches  or  bad  replicas  of  one's  self. 
They  sapped  all  one's  originality.  .  .  . 

These  were  some  of  the  musings  of  Sibyl  when  hav- 
ing her  hair  brushed  by  Sophie,  or  when  undergoing 
Swedish  massage  under  the  firm  but  soothing  hands  of 
a  blonde  giantess;  when  breakfasting  in  bed;  or  under- 


290 

going  a  long  train  journey  in  a  first-class  compartment 
with  a  defective  lamp. 

There  was  no  question  in  this  year  of  Lucy's  accom- 
panying her  husband  to  Glen  Sporran.  She  was  start- 
ing another  baby  and  was  firm  about  not  wishing  to 
go.  Sibyl  took  this  decision  most  amiably;  said  Lucy 
was  quite  wise,  and  further  proposed  that  she  should 
have  Maud  with  her  and  care-take  for  Sibyl  at  Engle- 
dene  House.  Clitheroe  was  likewise  to  be  left  behind. 
His  life  in  the  Highlands  was  one  long  succession  of 
dangerous  colds  and  there  wasn't  enough  accommoda- 
tion for  his  retinue  of  nurses;  especially  as  every  one 
you  asked  nowadays  must  have  with  them  a  maid  or 
a  valet.  Clithy  had  grown  so  absurdly  fond  of  Lucy 
that  Sibyl  suggested  jocosely  they  should  change 
babies.  She  thought  little  John  a  perfect  darling  —  so 
like  Roger  —  why  hadn't  Lucy  chosen  her  as  god- 
mother instead  of  Maud?  No  doubt  Clithy  would 
grow  up  more  like  a  normal  boy  when  the  rest  of  his 
features  balanced  Anne  of  Denmark's  nose.  .  .  . 
Meantime,  it  was  very  fortunate  things  were  as  they 
were.  And  Lucy  would  oblige  her  enormously  by 
looking  after  her  boy  while  she  was  entertaining  all 
those  horrid  people  in  the  North. 

Not  that  the  house-party  was  to  be  a  large  one.  It 
ran  away  with  so  much  money,  and  people  were  never 
grateful.  There  would  just  be  Stacy  Bream;  the 
Honble.  Victoria  Masham,  the  Maid  of  Honour  —  old 
Vicky  Long-i'-the-tooth,  Sibyl  called  her  behind  her 
back,  and  never  imagined  the  nickname  could  be  re- 
peated and  counteract  the  expense  of  a  month's  hospi- 
tality. Must  have  Vicky  to  keep  in  touch,  you  know, 
with  what  the  old  Queen  was  saying  and  doing  —  and 
an  acolyte  of  Stacy's  named  Reggie,  something  in  the 
Colonial  Office  —  he  could  flirt  with  Vicky  —  and 
p'raps  Arthur  Broadmead.  Then  —  for  a  day  or  two 
—  that  insufferable  cad,  Elijah  Tooley  — "  but  he's  so 


SIBYL  AS  SIREN  291 

frightfully,  frightfully  rich  and  might  be  useful." 
Aunt  Christabel,  of  course,  would  come,  to  keep  order, 
and  Aggie  Freebooter  and  Gertie  Wentworth  would 
make  up  the  house-party.  Aggie  Freebooter  was  that 
tiresome  Lady  Towcester's  daughter — "one  of  six 
girls,  my  dear  " —  but  when  she  was  away  from  her 
mother's  eye  she  was  deliciously  larky  and  awfully 
plucky,  and  didn't  mind  what  you  played  at;  while 
Gertie  Wentworth  —  or  the  Honble.  Gertrude  —  thir- 
ty-five, lots  of  money,  dresses  like  a  man,  whisky  and 
cigars,  takes  the  bank  at  Roulette  and  loses  everything 
but  her  temper. 

"  Well,  at  any  rate,"  said  Maud,  "  I'm  glad  Wil- 
lowby  Patterne  is  not  in  the  party,  this  time.  .  .  ." 

"My  dear!  .  .  ."  said  Sibyl  with  a  scream.  "  I've 
absolutely  dropped  him,  after  that  row  in  the  City  and 
that  extraordinary  case  in  the  courts  which  was  com- 
promised and  hushed  'up.  He's  gone  out  to  East 
Africa.  Haven't  you  heard?  " 

Maud  had  not  heard  and  cared  very  little  what  had 
happened  to  the  spendthrift  baronet.  But  Roger  had, 
and  was  a  little  uneasy  as  to  his  cherished  Happy  Val- 
ley. Willowby  Patterne,  mixed  up  once  more  with  a 
very  shady  Company  to  take  over  and  boom  a  new 
mineral  water  —  some  proposition  of  Bax  Strange- 
ways  —  and  a  matter  of  slander  and  a  club-steps  whip- 
ping, settled  out  of  court  .  .  .  and  pending  proceed- 
ings of  his  wife's  for  a  separation;  had  decided  ab- 
ruptly to  make  "  peau  neuve "  in  East  Africa.  He 
had  depicted  the  thrills  of  big-game  shooting  to  one 
of  his  dupes  just  come  of  age  and  into  possession  of 
a  pot  of  money.  This  young  man  would  stand  the 
racket  of  the  expense  —  £5,000  —  and  Willowby 
would  put  him  up  to  all  the  dodges.  And  perhaps  they 
might  find  minerals  and  get  a  concession.  .  .  . 

Whilst  he  was  up  in  Scotland  Roger  did  manage, 


292      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

with  the  aid  of  Arthur  Broadmead,  to  obtain  an  inter- 
view with  Sir  William  MacNaughten  on  the  subject  of 
East  African  developments  and  the  Company's  future 
administration.  But  Sir  William  seemed  vague,  and 
much  more  interested  and  definite  in  regard  to  another 
question:  King  Solomon's  Temple.  Had  Captain 
Brentham,  as  an  Orientalist,  ever  given  his  mind  to 
that  problem,  the  shape  and  structure  of  the  Temple, 
its  adornment,  and  the  hidden  meaning  of  the  Divine 
ordinances  ?  No,  Captain  Brentham  had  not  .  .  .  but 
...  er  ...  no  doubt  it  was  very  interesting  and  full 
of  meaning  .  .  .  only  .  .  .  East  Africa?  .  .  . 

"Oh,  East  Africa  —  our  Charter  —  Oh,  yes! 
Well,  come  and  see  me  about  that  when  I'm  back  in 
London.  You  know  my  address  there  ?  Westminster 
Palace  Hotel?" 

The  Glen  Sporran  party  broke  up  with  the  rain  and 
chill  winds  of  the  equinox;  but  Roger  stayed  on  there 
with  Sibyl  and  Aunt  Christabel :  nominally  to  examine 
the  affairs  of  the  estate  and  the  installation  of  the 
lobster  fishery;  in  reality  because  his  resolves  had  all 
dissolved  before  her  insistence,  her  tears,  her  threats  to 
make  a  scene.  Circe  triumphed;  preened  herself;  be- 
came once  more  gay  and  debonnaire.  But  her 
wretched  lover  felt  indeed  a  pig.  Aunt  Christabel, 
the  very  servants  seemed  to  guess  what  Sibyl  thought 
was  kept  wholly  secret  from  the  rest  of  the  world. 

A  month's  absence  in  Staffordshire  and  London,  and 
a  shamefaced  visit  to  Engledene  Lodge  did  something 
to  restore  his  self-respect.  He  called  on  Sir  William  at 
his  hotel,  resolved  to  broach  the  subject  of  the  East 
Africa  Governorship,  but  found  him  out.  Neverthe- 
less, to  his  delight  there  came  a  note  to  Pardew's  Hotel 
from  Sir  William  with  these  words  in  it :  "  Come  to 
breakfast  to-morrow  morning  at  nine.  I  have  some- 
thing very  interesting  to  discuss  with  you,  and  should 
value  your  opinion." 


SIBYL  AS  SIREN  293 

He  arrived  punctually.  Lady  M'acNaughten  was 
there  —  rather  vinegary  and  with  pursed  lips.  She 
dispensed  the  tea  and  coffee  with  a  very  strong  Glas- 
gow accent.  The  materials  of  the  breakfast  were  — 
Roger  thought  —  rather  meagre  for  such  wealthy  peo- 
ple, who  could  afford  to  retain  by  the  year  this  large 
suite  of  rooms.  As  no  mention  of  East  Africa  was 
made  during  breakfast  it  was  clearly  more  tactful  to 
wait  till  the  subject  was  introduced.  Perhaps  Sir  Wil- 
liam preferred  not  to  discuss  business  in  his  wife's 
presence.  At  last,  however,  he  finished  his  second  cup 
of  coffee,  wiped  his  lips,  said  a  grace  of  thanks  for 
"  our  bounteous  meal  "  in  which  Lady  MacNaughten 
joined ;  and  then  asked  Roger  to  accompany  him  to  his 
sitting-room. 

The  folding  doors  were  opened  and  shut  behind  them 
by  an  officious  waiter;  the  window  of  the  sitting-room 
looking  out  on  incipient  Victoria  Street  was  also  closed 
because  the  west  wind  was  chilly.  And  Sir  William 
then  turned  and  said  with  great  heartiness,  pointing 
to  a  cardboard  and  papier-mache  contraption  under 
a  glass  case : 

"  There !  That's  what  I  wanted  to  discuss  with  you, 
who  know  the  East  so  well :  a  Model  of  King  Solo- 
mon's Temple,  made  to  my  own  design !  " 

***** 

The  Governorship  of  the  Mombasa  Concession  was 
shortly  after  conferred  on  Lady  MacNaughten's 
nephew. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

BACK    TO    THE    HAPPY    VALLEY 

ROGER,  ever  since  he  returned  from  Scotland,  re- 
solved that  a  break  with  Sibyl  should  come  as 
soon  as  he  could  see  before  him  the  re-opening  of  an 
African  career.  Only  fortified  with  such  a  resolve 
could  he  face  his  wife's  candid  eyes  and  her  unques- 
tioning trust  in  him  —  or  Maud's  more  quizzical  gaze 
and  occasional  sardonic  remarks.  ..."  That  old  fox, 
MacNaughten,"  he  said  to  himself,  "  had  determined 
all  along  to  evade  the  well-meant  suggestions  of  candi- 
dates from  the  Foreign,  Colonial,  and  India  Offices, 
and  as  soon  as  he  got  his  Baronetcy  (which  came  with 
the  New  Year's  honours)  to  take  a  line  of  his  own." 
However,  Fate  for  once  hastened  the  denouement  by 
causing  Roger's  father  to  catch  cold  over  the  excava- 
tion of  the  Basilica  at  Silchester,  to  neglect  his  cold, 
and  to  die  of  double  pneumonia  in  the  week  preceding 
Christmas,  1890.  Roger  could  not  help  being  pro- 
foundly grateful  to  his  archaeological  parent  for  dying 
before  rather  than  after  Christmas,  because  this  de- 
cease, with  the  conventions  in  force,  and  Queen  Vic- 
toria behind  the  conventions,  absolutely  freed  him  from 
the  obligation  to  attend  the  elaborate  Christmas  and 
New  Year  festivities  ordained  by  Sibyl  at  Engledene. 
She  had  set  aside  a  suite  of  rooms  —  bedroom,  sit- 
ting-room and  office  —  at  6A,  Carlton  House  Terrace, 
and  would  no  longer  hear  of  his  staying  at  Pardew's 
Hotel  when  in  London  to  transact  business  with  her. 
There  were  times  when  he  seriously  considered  shoot- 
ing himself  —  and  strange  to  say,  all  through  this  pe- 
riod of  episodical  infidelity  he  had  never  loved  Lucy 

294 


BACK  TO  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY    295 

better,  or  found  her  smiling  silence  or  unimportant, 
unexacting  conversation  more  soothing. 

Her  approaching  confinement  and  his  father's  death 
together  constituted  a  barrier  of  reserve  that  even  Sibyl 
was  bound  to  respect.  He  therefore  utilized  this 
respite  to  work  assiduously  at  his  plans  for  flight  from 
the  enchantress.  He  was  most  anxious  after  he  was 
gone  that  no  one  should  say  with  justification  that  he 
had  let  Lady  Silchester  down,  had  treated  her  badly, 
got  things  into  a  muddle,  and  then  bolted. 

As  far  back  as  the  preceding  October  he  had  brought 
his  younger  brother,  Maurice,  the  barrister,  into  the 
Estate  Office  to  be  his  assistant.  Sibyl  could  suggest 
no  one  else  and  told  him  he  could  make  what  arrange- 
ments he  liked  —  if  only  —  if  —  only  he  would  not  be 
cruel  to  her,  not  talk  of  going  at  the  end  of  the  trial 
year.  As  he  had  not  complete  confidence  in  Maurice 
becoming  efficient  for  the  head  post,  he  had  entered  into 
a  provisional  arrangement  for  a  first-class  man  to  put 
over  Maurice,  selecting  him  at  the  Institute  of  Land 
Agents'  recommendation. 

So  much  therefore  had  been  done  to  safeguard  his 
employer's  interests. 

Then  as  to  his  own.  The  administration  of  his 
father's  estate  would  eventually  secure  a  total  sum  of 
£4,300  to  each  of  the  four  children  of  the  Rev.  Am- 
brose Brentham,  including  the  amount  they  had  re- 
cently received  by  deed  of  gift.  This,  with  other  odds 
and  ends  of  savings,  gave  Roger  a  capital  of  £5,000  to 
draw  on. 

As  soon  as  Lucy  was  well  over  her  accouchement,  in 
January  (1891),  he  had  several  long  and  confidential 
conversations  with  Arthur  Broadmead,  that  friend  in 
need  to  so  many  men  who  had  fallen  into  holes  of  their 
own  digging,  and  who  sought  rectification  by  extend- 
ing the  bounds  of  empire  and  making  two  blades  of 
grass  to  grow  where  but  one  had  grown  before.  Sev- 


296      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

eral  great  Anglo-German  financiers  were  seen  in  the 
City.  The  specimens  and  the  School  of  Mines'  report 
thereon  were  left  in  their  hands:  with  the  result  that  a 
small  and  select  Anglo-German  Syndicate  was  formed 
to  prospect  in  the  northern  part  of  German  East  Africa. 
Into  this  pool  Captain  Brentham  put  £2,000  and  was 
constituted  for  three  years  head  of  the  enterprise  with 
a  good  salary  and  very  large  discretion  as  to  means 
and  methods  of  developing  the  Happy  Valley. 

To  Maud  he  next  imparted  his  plans,  and  to  his 
surprise  they  were  received  with  cordial  approval. 

"  You're  quite  right,  Roger,  I'm  sure  you've  taken 
the  road  that  will  most  probably  lead  to  happiness  and 
fortune.  Lucy  is  certain  to  fall  in  with  your  scheme. 
She  can  stay  on  in  England  till  her  baby's  weaned  — 
it  was  sweet  of  you  both  to  call  it  after  me  —  I  was  so 
certain  you  were  going  to  name  it  '  Sibyl ' !  Then 
she  can  place  both  the  children  with  their  grandparents 
at  Aldermaston  and  come  out  and  join  you.  And  what 
is  more,  /  will  come  too !  I  should  love  to !  " 

There  now  remained  —  he  could  not  say  "  only  re- 
mained," it  was  too  portentous  a  crisis  —  the  final 
scene  with  Sibyl.  He  thought  it  over  many  a  night 
when  he  could  not  sleep,  many  a  morning  when  he  was 
going  through  estate  business  with  her  and  she  was 
leaning  unnecessarily  over  his  shoulder  or  furtively 
pinching  the  lobe  of  his  ear.  A  written  good-bye,  and 
then  immediate  departure,  would  be  cruel,  and  Sibyl 
might  afterwards  revenge  herself  on  Lucy,  left  behind 
defenceless;  or  on  Maurice.  There  were,  besides, 
points  of  business  he  must  discuss  with  her  before  leav- 
ing ;  at  any  rate  give  her  the  chance  of  asking  questions 
and  receiving  answers. 

So  he  summoned  up  courage  one  morning  and  tele- 
graphed he  wished  to  see  her  that  afternoon  in  London. 
She  was  up  for  the  "  little  season "  which  follows 
Christmas. 


BACK  TO  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY    297 

He  was  shown  into  her  library  at  6A,  Carlton  House 
Terrace.  She  had  come  in  from  skating  at  Princes, 
had  changed  into  a  wonderful  tea-gown  and  was  lying 
on  a  long  couch  over  which  a  magnificent  tiger  skin 
had  been  thrown.  A  small  inlaid  Moorish  table  held 
a  tea-tray. 

Sibyl:  "  Have  some  tea?  Tell  him  before  he  goes 
out  "  (referring  to  the  retreating  footman). 

Roger:  "  Thanks  very  much,  no.  I  have  had  tea 
and  I've  got  a  lot  to  tell  you.  So  I  don't  want  to  lose 
time."  (The  door  clicks  to.) 

Sibyl:  "  Well.  You're  very  solemn.  Draw  up  a 
chair.  Come  to  give  me  a  month's  warning?  But  to 
do  that  you  ought  to  stand.  ..." 

Roger:     "  That's  exactly  what  I  have  come  for.  .  .  ." 

Sibyl:  "Roger!  Don't  make  horrid  jokes.  You 
wouldn't  be  so  base  —  so  —  ungrateful  —  as  that.  .  .  ." 

Roger:  "  It  isn't  an  act  of  baseness,  that's  cer- 
tain ;  and  as  to  ingratitude,  I  think  by  going  away  I  am 
doing  the  best  thing  altogether,  so  far  as  you  are  con- 
cerned. No!  "  (she  is  rising  and  pushing  the  tea-table 
out  of  her  way  as  a  preparation  for  drama).  "  You 
must  let  me  explain  myself  —  and  do  let  us  discuss  this 
quietly,  not  as  though  we  were  acting  a  scene  on  the 
stage.  Sibyl!  Really  the  least  said,  soonest  mended. 
We  are  in  an  impossible  position.  ...  I  blame  myself 
more  than  you.  .  .  ."  (Sibyl:  "Thank  you!") 
"I  am  a  cad  ...  an  utter  cad.  I  loathe  myself 
sometimes  so  much  I  can't  look  at  my  face  in  the  glass 
or  meet  my  wife's  eyes.  I  am  going  back  to  Africa 
.  .  .  going  out  of  your  life.  .  .  .  You  must  forget 
all  about  me  ...  and  marry  some  decent  man." 
(His  voice  sounds  strangled  and  he  turns  away  to  re- 
cover himself.) 

Sibyl:  "  It  seems  to  me  it  is  you  that  are  becoming 
stagey.  What  docs  all  this  mean?  Has  Lucy  found 
out  we've  been  lovers  and  made  a  fuss?  ...  Or  is 


298      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

it   money?     Have   you   got    into   debt?     Do   be   ex- 
plicit!" 

Roger:  "  It's  none  of  these  things.  I  only  mean 
I  have  out-stayed  my  year  with  you,  my  trial  year, 
and  now  I  claim  my  liberty.  I  am  going  once  more 
to  try  for  a  career  in  Africa  .  .  .  and  ..." 

Sibyl  (white  with  anger):  "Well,  go  to  Africa! 
I  never  wish  to  see  you  again!  Go!  Go!  Go!" 
(She  half  rises  as  if  to  expel  him  with  her  hands,  but 
he  saves  her  the  trouble,  takes  up  his  hat,  gloves  and 
stick,  walks  out,  closes  the  door  of  the  library  gently 
and  lets  himself  out  of  the  house.) 

The  next  day  he  leaves  at  the  door  a  tin  despatch 
box  and  a  letter  containing  its  key.  The  box  has 
amongst  its  contents  the  bunch  of  keys  he  has  used  on 
the  Estate,  a  great  bundle  of  accounts,  notes,  and  sug- 
gestions for  the  immediate  future.  In  the  letter  which 
accompanies  this  box  he  tells  Sibyl  all  about  the  ar- 
rangement he  has  made  in  her  Estate  Office,  advises 
her  to  keep  on  his  brother  Maurice  who  shows  signs  of 
uncommon  ability,  but  for  some  time  yet  to  retain  as 
Head  Agent  Mr.  Flower,  provisionally  engaged  for  a 
year,  who  is  highly  recommended  by  the  Institute  of 
Land  Agents.  Both  alike  are  now  well  acquainted 
with  the  affairs  of  the  Silchester  Estate.  .  .  .  He  asks 
her  to  be  kind  to  Lucy  who  will  remove  as  soon  as  she 
is  strong  enough  to  Aldermaston  and  meantime  re- 
mains at  the  Lodge  under  Maud's  care.  Later  on, 
when  her  child  is  old  enough  to  be  left  in  the  grand- 
parents' keeping,  Lucy  and  Maud  will  join  him  in  East 
Africa.  His  address  in  London  till  he  leaves  for 
Marseilles  on  February  28  will  be  Pardew's  Ho- 
tel. .  .  . 

He  will  never  forget  her  kindness  .  .  .  never  .  .  . 
at  a  critical  time  in  his  life.  And  will  not  say  "  good- 
bye," because  when  he  has  "  made  good  "  in  Africa  he 
will  come  back  on  a  holiday  and  hope  to  find  the  Es- 


BACK  TO  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY         299 
tate  flourishing  and  Silchester  grown  into  a  sturdy  boy. 

From  what  I  knew  of  Sibyl  I  should  say  she  at  first 
took  the  breaking  off  of  their  relations  very  hardly. 
..."  Agony,    rage,   despair "...  much  pacing  up 
and   down   the   library.  .  .  .  Passionate  letters   half- 
written,  then  torn  up  into  small  fragments  and  thrown 
into  the  fire.     Then  —  for  she  was  a  slave  to  her  large 
household  and  magnificent  mode  of  life  —  her  maid 
Sophie  enters  the  library  and  reminds  My  Lady  that 
she  is  due  that  night  to  dine  at  the  Italian  Embassy. 
So  Sibyl  has  to  submit  to  be  coiffed,  dressed,  jewelled, 
and  driven  off  in  a  brougham  —  a  little  late,  and  that 
intrudes   on  her  mind,   because  she   has   heard  you 
should  never  be  late  to  an  Ambassador's  invitation,  it 
is  a  sort  of  lesc-majeste.     But  to  cope  with  the  de- 
mands made  on  her,  she  has  to  force  her  heart-break 
to  the  back  of  her  mind  and  sustain  her  reputation  for 
gay    beauty,    daring   expression,    and   alert    wit  —  in 
French  as  well  as  English.     There  was  a  Royalty  there 
to  whom  she  had  to  curtsey  and  with  whom  she  had  to 
sustain   a  raillery,   shot  with  malice,   which   required 
considerable  brain-concentration;   for  though  the  re- 
torts must  call  forth  further  bursts  of  laughter  from 
the  chorus  that  watched  the  duel,  they  must  be  free 
from  the  slightest  impertinence. 

Roger's  abrupt  leave-taking  only  remained  like  a 
dull  ache  behind  her  vivid  consciousness  of  triumph; 
of  celebrated  men,  bestarred  with  orders,  swathed  with 
ribbons;  of  women  sparkling  with  jewels  and  rippling 
in  silks ;  of  a  Prince  who  might  "  make  "  you  with  a 
smile  or  "  mar  "  you  with  a  frown;  of  many  enemies 
concealed  as  friends ;  of  wonderful  music  and  exquisite 
food,  for  which  she  had  no  appetite.  It  was  not  until 
she  had  re-entered  her  dressing-room  to  be  unrobed 
that  she  had  once  more  the  mind-space  to  reconsider 
Roger's  farewell  and  what  life  would  mean  to  her 


300      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

without  his  constant  companionship.  Then,  foresee- 
ing otherwise  a  ghastly  night  of  turning  things  over 
and  over  in  her  thoughts,  she  told  Sophie  she  had  bad 
neuralgia ;  and  opening  a  tiny  little  casquet  with  a  tiny 
little  gold  key  on  her  bangle  she  took  from  it  the  mate- 
rials for  a  sleeping  draught,  compounded  them  cau- 
tiously —  she  was  the  last  person  in  the  world  to  com- 
mit suicide,  even  by  mistake  —  swallowed  the  dose  and 
half  an  hour  afterwards  slipped  into  oblivion. 

The  next  morning  she  awoke  with  the  inevitable 
headache,  and  the  heartache  returned.  But  there  was 
the  breakfast  tray  to  distract  her  thoughts,  and  there 
were  the  morning  letters.  Among  these  was  an  invita- 
tion to  meet  an  Oriental  Potentate  in  very  select  com- 
pany—  an  opportunity  for  display  which  she  had 
coveted  —  and  an  invitation  to  dine  with  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  and  Mrs.  Benson,  which  she  had 
sought  for,  as  she  wanted  to  allure  the  young  Bensons 
into  her  circle  of  "  souls.'' 

She  then  reflected,  while  having  her  hair  brushed, 
that  it  might  be  just  as  well  that  the  breach  with  Roger 
had  come  before  she  had  been  in  any  way  tarnished 
by  the  breath  of  scandal.  People  had  already  chaffed 
her  about  her  handsome  Land  Agent.  She  would  act 
so  as  to  throw  dust  in  their  eyes,  and  certainly  not 
play  the  part  of  la  maitresse  delaissee.  Later  on  in  the 
morning,  therefore,  she  wrote  to  Lucy  saying  she  had 
accepted  Roger's  resignation  with  the  deepest  regret, 
but  would  not  stand  between  him  and  his  beloved  Af- 
rica. Yet  she  hoped  Lucy  would  not  think  of  leaving 
the  Lodge  until  she  was  perfectly  strong.  She  also 
told  Roger's  successor,  Mr.  Flower,  she  had  confirmed 
the  arrangement  Captain  Brentham  had  outlined 
and  requested  him  to  call  on  her  in  the  following 
week. 

In  the  afternoon  of  that  day  she  issued  the  instruc- 
tion "  Not  at  home,"  intending  to  retire  to  her  bed- 


BACK  TO  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY    301 

room  and  have  a  good  cry.  But  the  full  indulgence  in 
this  luxury  was  baulked  by  the  announcement  of  her 
cousin  Maud  Brentham.  Maud's  name  some  while 
ago  had  been  put  on  the  short  list  of  people  to  whom 
"  Not  at  home  "  did  not  apply. 

Maud  had  really  been  asked  to  call  by  the  timorous 
Roger,  to  see  how  Sibyl  was  "  taking  it."  So  Sibyl, 
divining  this,  received  her  affectionately ;  and  only  com- 
plained of  the  excessive  brilliance  of  the  ambassadorial 
party  of  the  night  before  and  the  dead  set  made  at  her 
by  the  Prince  having  reduced  her  this  following  after- 
noon to  the  condition  of  a  doll  with  the  sawdust  escap- 
ing from  every  seam.  She  talked  quite  calmly  of 
Roger's  approaching  departure  and  the  arrangement  of 
Lucy's  affairs  after  he  had  gone.  "  Why  can't  you 
and  she  transfer  yourselves  from  the  Lodge  to  the 
House  at  Engledene  and  stay  there  indefinitely,  till  you 
take  ship  for  Africa  and  golden  joys?  Lucy's  a  god- 
send with  poor  nervous,  peevish  little  Clithy.  I  must 
leave  the  child  there  a  good  deal  at  present.  He  looks 
very  peeky  if  he  comes  to  London.  And  at  Easter  I 
shall  shut  up  this  house  and  go  off  to  travel  for  quite 
a  long  time.  .  .  ." 

"  But  not  to  East  Africa,  I  trust  .  .  .?  "  said  Maud 
with  some  anxiety. 

"Maud!     You're  a  toad!" 

When  two  very  sad  women  came  to  Victoria  on  an 
appallingly  cold  and  foggy  morning  to  take  leave  of 
Roger  —  who  was  departing  for  Paris-Marseilles  to 
join  his  steamer  —  they  were  joined  by  a  third,  accom- 
panied by  an  aloof  footman  carrying  wraps ;  and  books 
for  Roger's  solace  on  the  journey.  Sibyl  put  her  arm 
round  Lucy's  waist,  as  they  were  saying  farewell ;  and 
Roger  having  kissed  his  wife  —  most  tenderly  —  and 
his  sister  —  hesitated  for  one  second,  and  then  kissed 
Sibyl  too. 


302      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 
From  Roger  Brentham  to  his  Wife. 

H.B.M.  Agency, 
Unguja, 
March  29,  1891. 

[Very  near  the  second  anniversary  of  our 
happy  marriage.  Barely  two  years  married 
and  already  two  children.  I  wonder  how 
baby  Maud  is  getting  on?] 

DEAREST  LUCE, — 

I  sent  you  a  cable  from  Port  Said  saying  "  All  right 
thus  far."  I  hope  you  got  it?  I  arrived  here  by  the 
French  steamer  yesterday. 

I  enjoyed  the  journey  to  Paris  and  Marseilles.  But 
after  we  had  left  that  port  for  a  very  stormy  Medi- 
terranean I  went  through  a  beastly  time.  1  would 
have  given  everything  I  possessed  —  except  you  —  to 
find  myself  back  at  Engledene  and  with  all  these  Afri- 
can plans  undone.  I  have  led  such  a  full  life  within 
the  last  two  years,  have  had  the  very  best  of  England ; 
and  the  flatness  of  existence  on  an  old-fashioned 
steamer  came  home  to  me  crushingly  during  the  nine 
days'  voyage  between  Marseilles  and  Port  Said.  Such 
a  hush  after  the  noisy  whirlpool  of  life  in  London  in 
Sibyl's  circle;  or  even  the  gay  doings  at  Engledene 
when  we  had  got  over  the  first  of  our  mourning  for 
the  poor  old  Pater.  There  were  no  newspapers  and 
no  news  —  nine  days  completely  out  of  the  world.  No 
one  on  board  I  knew  and  no  one  who  had  ever  heard 
of  me.  It  brought  home  to  me  my  utter  insignificance ! 
I  felt  a  bit  better  when  we  passed  through  the  Suez 
Canal.  The  sound  of  Arabic  always  stimulates  me  to 
adventure.  The  cold  weather  left  us  in  the  Red  Sea. 
I  passed  most  of  my  time  mugging  up  Swahili  again 
and  trying  to  revive  my  Arabic  with  some  Syrians  who 
were  on  board.  Aden  cheered  me  up  considerably. 


BACK  TO  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY    303 

There  were  the  jolly  laughing  Somalis  once  again,  and 
I  engaged  four  bright  boys  to  go  with  me  as  servants 
and  gun-carriers  out  hunting.  You  could  light  up  a 
dark  passage  with  their  flashing  teeth!  When  we 
reached  Unguja  I  admit  I  felt  some  uncomfortable- 
ness.  It  is  so  awkward  returning  as  a  person  of  no 
status  to  a  place  where  one  has  been  an  official.  But 
as  you  know,  I  had  taken  the  precaution,  a  month 
before  I  started,  of  writing  confidentially  to  Sir  God- 
frey Dewburn  about  my  plans  and  intentions.  The 
Dewburns  could  not  have  been  kinder.  He  sent  the 
Agency  boat  to  meet  me  with  one  of  the  new  Vice- 
Consuls  in  it,  and  here  I  am  at  the  Agency,  installed  as 
their  guest  till  I  can  assemble  my  safari  and  get 
away  up-country.  Lady  Dewburn  plies  me  with  ques- 
tions about  you  and  our  children.  .  .  . 

The  Dewburns  are  expecting  promotion  to  a  diplo- 
matic post  —  possibly  Persia.  They  feel  their  work 
here  is  done,  now  that  the  Anglo-German  Treaty  is 
ratified  and  Unguja  is  a  British  protectorate.  The 
treaty  has  had  the  best  effect  on  Anglo-German  rela- 
tions here  and  incidentally  on  my  prospects  of  co- 
operation. I  am  to  see  Wissmann  as  soon  as  I  land 
at  Medinat-al-Barkah.  Eugene  Schrader,  who  is  all- 
powerful  in  Anglo-German  finance,  has  written  out  to 
him.  I  have  little  doubt  we  shall  get  a  Concession  over 
the  Happy  Valley  for  our  syndicate. 

Landing  at  Medina  will  be  a  little  out  of  the  direct 
route  to  Irangi,  but  I  shall  travel  across  the  Nguru 
country,  now  quite  pacified  and  safe,  and  try  to  take 
Hangodi  on  the  way  to  Ugogo.  What  associations 
the  sight  of  it  will  revive  if  I  do!  That  halting-place 
below  the  great  rise,  where  we  had  tea  together  in  the 
shade  when  I  met  you  in  your  machila  with  Halima, 
and  you  were  so  taken  aback  that  you  called  me  "  dar- 
ling " — 7  haven't  forgotten!  And  talking  of  Halima, 
reminds  me  to  say  that  she  sends  you  her  many  salaams. 


304      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

Andrade  is  cook  with  the  Dewburns  and  Halima  has 
some  function  as  housemaid.  I  have  arranged  when 
the  Dewburns  go  that  Andrade  is  to  join  me;  so  when 
you  come  out,  my  darling,  Halima  shall  be  there  to 
wait  on  you  and  on  Maud. 

It'll  be  rather  horrid  meeting  the  Bazzards  again 
at  Medina.  They  returned  recently  from  a  long  holi- 
day in  England  —  an  East  Coast  watering-place 
chiefly,  where  Bazzard,  who  doesn't  know  a  yacht  from 
a  barge,  got  elected  to  the  local  Yachting  Qub.  I  hear 
that  Mrs.  B.  looks  forward  confidently  to  her  husband 
succeeding  Dewburn  when  the  latter  is  promoted;  but 
I  think  there  is  not  the  slightest  chance  of  it. 

The  Stotts  must  have  got  my  letter  by  now  telling 
them  I  was  on  my  way.  Of  course  there  has  been  no 
time  for  a  reply.  But  Callaway  tells  me  the  last  news 
of  them  was  good.  I  have  already  picked  up  quite 
a  third  of  my  Wanyamwezi  "  faithfuls  "  who  were 
hanging  about  Unguja  since  Willowby  Patterne's 
safari  was  paid  off.  That  man  is  a  scoundrel!  He 
came  out  here  and  made  free  use  of  my  name,  pre- 
tending even  he  had  letters  from  me  which  he  never 
produced.  He  therefore  got  favours  and  concessions 
and  secured  my  original  hundred  men  —  or  what  was 
left  of  them.  His  tour  through  the  Mvita  hinterland 
was  one  long  sickening  path  of  slaughter:  he  and  his 
companion  —  a  poor  youth  who  was  often  down  with 
dysentery  and  whom  Patterne  treated  brutally  —  must 
have  killed  about  three  times  the  amount  of  game  they 
could  use  for  food  or  trophies.  His  ravages  even 
shocked  his  carnivorous  porters  and  annoyed  the  na- 
tives. Do  you  know,  I  think  he  must  have  had  just  a 
glimmering  about  the  existence  of  the  Happy  Valley  — 
he  was  always  following  me  about  at  Glen  Sporran 
and  cocking  an  eye  at  my  correspondence.  Because 
though  ostensibly  only  big-game  slaughtering  they 
made  straight  for  the  south  side  of  Kilimanjaro  (in- 


BACK  TO  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY    305 

stead  of  keeping  to  the  British  Sphere)  ;  and  when  the 
safari  reached  Arusha  ya  Jim  he  tried  to  get  guides  for 
"  Manyara  " —  the  porters  swear  he  used  the  word. 
He  cross-questioned  some  of  them  as  to  where  they 
had  been  with  you  and  me.  However,  fortunately  he 
had  an  odd  trick  of  getting  himself  hated  by  all  the 
native  tribes  he  met,  as  well  as  by  his  own  porters, 
whom  he  used  to  flog  atrociously.  (They  tell  disgust- 
ing stories  about  these  floggings  which  I  cannot  put 
down  on  paper.)  When  his  caravan  got  past  the 
slopes  of  Meru  it  fell  in  with  "  our  Masai,"  as  I  call 
them.  And  then  it  was  like  one  of  the  old  fairy  stories 
of  the  bad  girl  who  tried  to  follow  the  good  girl  down 
the  well  into  fairyland,  and  couldn't  remember  the 
countersign.  Instead  of  hitting  it  off  with  the  Masai 
he  vexed  them  in  some  way  and  at  last  they  turned  on 
him  and  forced  his  safari  to  go  back  to  Kilimanjaro. 
At  least  the  Wanyamwezi  porters  refused  to  continue 
the  journey,  which  comes  to  the  same  thing.  He  has 
left  for  England  —  I  am  glad  to  say  —  or  I  might 
have  fallen  foul  of  him.  The  two  of  them  killed 
enough  ivory  to  pay  the  costs  of  the  whole  outfit.  So 
he  swears  he  is  coming  back  again  and  will  then  take 
a  large  body  of  armed  men  with  him  and  wipe  out  the 
Masai. 

Now  I  must  bring  this  long  letter  to  a  close.  Much 
love  to  dear  old  Maud,  and  my  most  respectful  greet- 
ings to  my  cousin  and  late  employer.  I  found  her 
fame  for  beauty,  wit,  and  dominance  over  Society  had 
reached  even  to  Unguja.  ...  In  fact  I  rather  winced 
at  turning  over  three-months-old  illustrated  papers 
here  and  seeing  pictures  of  her  in  wonderful  costumes 
or  —  in  the  magazines  —  as  a  type  of  English  beauty. 
.  .  .  How  far  away  it  all  seems !  .  .  . 

Your  loving 

RODGE. 


3o6      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 
From  the  same  to  the  same. 

German  Headquarters, 

Medinat-al-Barka, 

April  30,  1891. 
DEAREST, — 

You  will  be  rather  surprised  that  a  month  has  gone 
by  and  I  have  got  no  nearer  my  goal  than  this !  But 
firstly  I  went  down  with  a  bad  go  of  fever  —  all  right 
now  —  and  secondly  I  could  not  hustle  von  Wissmann, 
who  is  Imperial  Commissioner  here  and  who  has  been 
very  kind  —  and  thirdly  the  rains  are  so  appalling  just 
now  that  overland  travelling  is  well-nigh  impossible  till 
the  country  dries  up  a  little.  But  I  am  not  losing  my 
time  otherwise.  I  am  getting  everything  fixed  up  with 
the  Germans,  and  next  shall  only  have  to  arrive  at  an 
understanding  with  the  natives.  The  boundaries  of 
our  Concession  (which  will  include  the  Stotts)  cover 
the  Happy  Valley  from  the  water-parting  between  the 
Bubu  and  the  Kwou  on  the  south  to  the  escarpment  at 
the  north  end  of  the  lake,  and  on  east  and  west  in- 
clude all  the  water-shed  of  Lake  Manyara,  Iraku  and 
Fiome.  So  they  have  dealt  with  us  generously. 

Wissmann  I  like  immensely.  He  is  a  great  man  and 
has  the  interests  of  the  real  natives  thoroughly  at 
heart.  Our  old  friends  the  Stotts  have  impressed  him 
favourably  and  they  are  to  be  woven  into  my  schemes 
of  development.  Wissmann  from  the  first  asked  me 
to  put  up  at  his  headquarters  and  treated  me  like  a 
colleague  in  the  opening  up  of  Africa.  So  I  was  saved 
the  disagreeableness  of  staying  at  my  former  Consulate 
with  the  Bazzards. 

Mrs.  Bazzard  has  been  sickly  in  her  protestations  of 
friendship,  utterly  insincere  as  you  know.  I  fancy 
she  is  turning  her  pen  now  on  Sir  Godfrey,  in  the  hope 
she  may  oust  him.  Considering  how  kind  the  Dew- 


BACK  TO  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY    307 

burns  were  to  them  it  is  odious  to  note  how  she  tries 
to  disparage  him.  .  .  . 

There  is  not  much  news  from  the  interior.  I  hear 
that  Ali-bin-Ferhani  got  rewarded  by  the  Germans  for 
saving  Hangodi  Station,  and  that  Mbogo  is  still  chief 
there  in  name,  the  real  chief  of  the  district  being  Ann 
Anderson,  or  Mgozimke  — "  The  man-woman,"  as  the 
natives  call  her. 

In  haste  to  catch  the  mail.  ... 

Your  loving 

ROGER. 

From  the  same  to  the  same. 

Mwada, 

The  Happy  Valley, 

July  28,  1891. 
MY  OWN  DEAR  WIFE, — 

I  reached  the  shores  of  the  lake  —  which  I  now  find 
is  called  Lawa  ya  mweri  —  and  the  end  of  the  Happy 
Valley  on  —  as  near  as  I  can  reckon  —  June  20.  (The 
Stotts  have  no  almanacs  and  are  quite  indifferent  to 
dates,  times,  seasons;  they  live  under  some  enchant- 
ment, they  tell  me,  since  they  came  here,  like  the  leg- 
ends of  people  carried  off  to  Fairyland.)  I  met  Mr. 
Stott  at  Burungi,  which  now  looks  a  flourishing  sta- 
tion. The  Wagogo  seem  to  me  quite  recalcitrant  to 
Christianity,  but  the  Stotts  have  to  keep  this  up  as  a 
depot  for  their  traffic  with  the  coast,  and  they  are 
helped  in  this  by  the  German  Government.  .  .  .  Stott 
and  I  journeyed  together  through  the  Irangi  country 
almost  in  state.  The  Stotts  have  become  enormously 
popular  as  "  medicine  men."  They  have  stopped  epi- 
demics of  small-pox  by  vaccinating  the  people,  have 
shown  them  how  to  stay  the  ravages  of  the  burrowing 
fleas,  and  they  are  making  a  dead  set  against  infanti- 


3o8      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

cide,  having  found  one  or  two  leading  chiefs  sufficiently 
intelligent  to  appreciate  the  importance  of  a  large  pop- 
ulation. Formerly,  as  you  may  remember,  there  was 
such  a  prejudice  against  female  babies  that  they  were 
often  exposed  to  the  hyenas  outside  the  tembe,  and  all 
children  who  came  into  the  world  by  an  irregular 
presentation,  or  with  a  tooth  already  through  the  gum, 
likewise  all  twins,  were  either  thrown  into  the  lake  or 
abandoned  to  the  carnivorous  ants  or  prowling  car- 
nivores. (There  is  a  curious  legend  here —  Stott  says 
—  that  sometimes  these  unhappy  infants  were  picked 
up  by  female  baboons  of  the  Chakma  type  and  nursed 
by  them  with  their  own  offspring. ) 

Well :  you  can  imagine,  having  lived  already  in  these 
parts,  what  the  infant  death-rate  amounted  to.  But 
the  local  chiefs  having  had  the  whole  theory  exposed 
to  them  have  sanctioned  a  crusade  against  infanticide 
for  any  reason.  The  Wa-rangi  have  further  been  per- 
suaded to  abandon  the  custom  of  burning  alive  women 
suspected  of  adultery.  I  did  not  like  to  tell  you  at 
the  time,  but  as  we  passed  through  the  Irangi  country 
in  November,  '88,  they  were  actually  killing  unfortu- 
nate women  in  this  manner.  They  believe  that  if  a 
man  goes  out  hunting  and  makes  a  bad  miss  in  throwing 
his  spear  or  assegai  at  an  elephant  it  is  because  his 
wife  is  untrue  to  him  at  home!  So  when  he  returns 
from  the  chase  his  wretched  spouse  is  trussed  up  and 
bound  to  the  top  of  a  great  pile  of  brushwood. 

Consequently,  at  several  of  the  Irangi  villages  on  our 
way  up  the  Bubu  valley  the  \vomen  who  were  the  wives 
of  sporting  duffers  came  out  in  deputations  to  dance 
round  the  worthy  Stott  till  they  quite  embarrassed  him ; 
especially  as  the  dances  were  of  an  indelicate  nature. 

The  Stotts  have  now  quite  a  nice-looking  station 
to  the  south-east  of  the  main  lake,  on  a  grassy  rise 
with  the  Mburu  river  on  the  south  and  a  much  smaller 
salt  lake  on  the  east.  This  looks  like  sparkling  ice 


BACK  TO  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY    309 

under  the  sun  and  is  nearly  solid — ?  salt — ?  soda. 
Its  borders  seem  to  be  a  kind  of  salt  lick  for  the  game 
which  is  once  more  swarming  and  singularly  tame. 
There  are  no  rhinos,  fortunately,  and  the  tricky  tem- 
pered elephants  and  buffaloes  prefer  the  wooded  re- 
gions farther  north  and  west.  The  lions,  leopards  and 
chitas  are  so  glutted  with  food  that  they  leave  the  do- 
mestic cattle  and  human  beings  alone ;  and  the  myriad 
zebras,  antelopes,  elands,  bushbuck,  giraffes,  wart-hogs 
and  ostriches  are  quite  willing  to  live  at  peace  with 
mankind.  Secretary  birds  and  saddle-billed  storks  are 
numerous  and  keep  the  snakes  down ;  marabou  storks 
and  vultures  devour  all  the  carrion  and  even  the  filth 
round  the  native  villages  —  so  the  country  seems 
healthy.  Enormous  flocks  of  crowned  cranes  and  bus- 
tards look  after  the  locusts  and  grasshoppers.  The 
flamingoes  by  the  lake  shore  are  as  numerous  as  they 
were  in  our  time.  .  .  . 

The  Stotts'  station  is  built  after  the  fashion  of  the 
native  houses  of  the  district:  long,  continuous,  one- 
storied  "  tembes "  forming  a  hollow  square,  inside 
which  the  cattle  and  sheep  are  kept  at  night.  .  .  . 

But  what  I  am  longing  to  describe  is  the  country  of 
Iraku.  I  went  there  with  Stott,  you  may  remember, 
whilst  we  stayed  waiting  for  news  of  poor  John  Baines. 
I  was  immensely  taken  with  it  then.  But  now  I  have 
seen  it  more  in  detail  I  am  enthusiastic.  It  resembles 
—  I  can't  help  saying  —  a  little  Abyssinia  —  from  all 
I  have  heard  and  read  of  Abyssinia,  though  it  is  not 
at  such  great  altitudes.  Its  natives  are  actually  re- 
lated in  speech  and  type  to  those  of  Southern  Abys- 
sinia. I  should  estimate  the  average  height  at  five 
thousand  feet,  with  ridges,  peaks  and  craters  touching 
seven  or  eight  thousand;  so  that  the  temperature  is 
almost  perfect  —  nights  always  cool,  not  to  say  cold. 
It  is  a  fertile,  fruitful  land  of  ups  and  downs,  richly 
forested  valleys,  plenty  of  streams,  grassy  uplands  like 


3io      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

the  Berkshire  downs :  indeed  a  very  English-looking 
country.  Somewhere  here,  not  far  from  the  escarp- 
ment and  the  Happy  Valley,  we  will  have  our  home, 
dearest,  and  here  you  and  Maud  shall  join  me  as  soon 
as  ever  you  can  come  out.  How  I  long  for  that  com- 
ing. There  are  times  when,  in  spite  of  the  Stotts  and 
their  cheeriness,  I  feel  sick  with  melancholy  and  loneli- 
ness. The  change  from  that  English  life  has  been  too 
abrupt.  As  soon  as  ever  little  Maud  is  weaned  and 
able  to  be  left  with  your  mother  you  must  pack  up  and 
come.  My  Agents  in  the  City,  Messrs.  Troubridge, 
who  pay  you  (I  hope)  your  allowance  quarterly,  have 
all  my  instructions  as  to  your  passage,  and  Maud's, 
your  outfit,  etc.  Once  I  can  get  you  two  out  here  I 
shall  settle  down  contentedly  enough  and  make  a  for- 
tune —  I  doubt  not  —  on  which,  some  day,  we  can 
retire  and  live  happily  ever  afterwards. 

Meantime  as  I  have  written  very  fully,  only  show 
this  letter  to  Maud  and  say  as  little  as  possible  about 
it  to  Sibyl,  lest  she  repeat  my  account  of  the  Happy 
Valley  to  that  scoundrel,  Patterne.  She  says  she  never 
sees  him  now,  and  she  certainly  ought  not  to  after  the 
reputation  he  has  left  behind  in  East  Africa;  but  as 
likely  as  not  she  will  resume  the  acquaintance,  and  he 
is  the  last  sort  of  person  I  wish  to  meet  in  these  parts 
.  .  .  Mrs.  Stott  of  course  sends  love  to  you  and  the 
kindest  greetings.  Her  enthusiasm  for  her  Creator  is 
unabated,  because  they  have  so  far  had  wonderful  good 
fortune  since  they  blundered  into  this  haven  of  rest 
and  beauty  in  October,  1888.  If  one  or  other  of  them 
did  not  have  once  in  a  way  to  go  down  to  the  coast 
they  would  enjoy  —  she  says  —  perfect  health.  .  .  . 

Your  loving 

ROGER. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

FIVE    YEARS    LATER 

ROGER  BRENTHAM  has  now  lived  consecutively 
for  five  years  in  the  Happy  Valley;  or,  to  be  accu- 
rate, at  Magara,  in  a  natural  fortress  looking  down 
on  it  from  the  Iraku  escarpment.  Much  of  his  work, 
however,  lies  in  the  plains  below,  and  he  has  a  com- 
fortable rest-house  near  the  Stotts'  station  —  but  not 
too  near,  for  Kaya  la  Balalo  1 —  as  they  have  named 
it  —  is  now  the  centre  of  a  considerable  native  village, 
a  little  too  noisy,  dusty,  and  smelly  for  fastidious 
nerves  and  noses. 

In  these  five  years  a  great  transformation  has  taken 
place  in  and  around  the  Happy  Valley.  A  land  settle- 
ment has  been  come  to  with  the  natives,  and  is  duly 
laid  down  in  a  rough  survey  and  in  signed  documents 
drawn  up  in  German  and  Swahili.  The  native  villages, 
plantations,  pasture  ground  and  reserves  are  clearly 
defined  so  that  they  may  be  placed  outside  the  scope 
of  white  encroachment ;  but  in  coming  to  this  agree- 
ment, some  common-sense  regard  has  been  had  for 
highly  mineralized  land  not  already  inhabited  and  suit- 
able for  profitable  exploitation  (with  a  share  of  the 
profits  going  to  the  native  community)  and  for  the 
location  of  European  settlements,  farms,  mission  sta- 
tions, laboratories  and  experimental  plantations.  In 
short,  both  parties  are  satisfied.  There  is  sufficient  se- 
curity for  the  investment  of  much  white  capital  in  this 
region  of  undeveloped  wealth ;  and  the  Negroes  are 
reassured  regarding  their  homes  and  future  prospects 
of  expansion.  They  have  been  shrewd  bargainers  and 
1 "  The  City  of  God." 


3i2      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

have  had  the  Stotts  as  their  advocates.  The  news  of 
their  fair  and  even  generous  treatment  has  attracted 
considerable  native  immigration,  especially  from  the 
Nyamwezi  countries;  Brentham's  Wa-nyamwezi  por- 
ters have  been  useful  recruiting  agents,  and  the  district 
is  well  off  for  labour.  The  native  chiefs  administer 
rough  justice  as  between  native  and  native.  Brentham 
and  three  of  his  German  colleagues,  as  well  as  Mr. 
Ewart  Stott,  hold  commissions  from  the  German  Gov- 
ernment as  justices  of  the  peace,  and  there  is  a  German 
commandant  at  a  central  post  in  the  Irangi  country 
who  presides  over  a  Court  of  Appeal  from  their  deci- 
sions. But  as  a  rule,  these  Concessionaires,  having 
originally  inspired  confidence  in  von  Wissmann's  mind 
during  his  great  pacification  of  German  East  Africa, 
are  left  pretty  free  to  administer  the  area  of  their  large 
Concession  and  to  keep  order  within  its  limits.  This, 
with  the  cordial  co-operation  of  the  native  chiefs,  they 
find  comparatively  easy,  and  in  this  the  friendship  be- 
tween Roger  and  the  outlying  Masai  tribes,  who  have 
not  forgotten  the  blood-brotherhood  of  1888,  has  been 
very  useful.  The  Happy  Valley  has  nothing  to  fear 
from  Masai  raids  and  has  at  present  no  outside  enemies. 
Lucy  and  Maud  joined  Roger  in  the  spring  of  1892, 
and  after  four  years'  happy  life  in  this  curiously  se- 
cluded region  —  so  cut  off  as  it  was  from  African  trou- 
bles, from  wars  between  Arabs  and  Europeans,  raids 
of  tribe  upon  tribe,  risings  against  the  Germans,  squab- 
bles with  British  pioneers  —  are  now  preparing  to  re- 
turn to  England.  Lucy  has  had  two  more  children, 
one  born  in  1893  and  the  other  in  1895.  She  is  anx- 
ious to  take  them  both  home  and  place  them  in  safety 
there ;  at  the  same  time  she  hungers  for  a  sight  of  the 
older  two  whom  she  has  not  seen  for  over  four  years. 
She  is  in  fact  a  prey  to  that  divided  allegiance  which 
has  so  often  marred  the  happiness  of  the  wives  of  men 
engaged  in  Indian  or  African  work:  a  desire  to  be 


FIVE  YEARS  LATER  313 

with  their  husbands,  and  yet  an  anxiety  about  the 
health  and  bringing-up  of  their  children  in  a  barbaric 
environment.  The  Stotts  consider  they  have  solved 
this  question  by  parting  with  their  oldest  child  and 
letting  their  other  children  run  the  African  risks  and 
grow  up  —  if  they  survive  —  with  only  an  African 
outlook.  They  are  true  colonists  in  intention.  But 
settlers  like  the  Brenthams  always  envisage  an  eventual 
retreat  to  the  home  country  and  an  English  education 
for  their  children. 

They  are  assembled  on  the  open  ground  beyond  the 
garden  of  their  house  in  Iraku,  to  take  leave  of  their 
German  associates  in  the  Concession :  Herr  Treuherz 
Hildebrandt  (whose  sentimental  fore-name  is  usually 
disguised  under  the  initial  T)  and  Dr.  Wolfgang 
\Yiese.  Hildebrandt  is  the  mining  engineer  who  is 
ascertaining  the  mineral  wealth  of  the  mountain  region 
bordering  on  the  Happy  Valley;  Dr.  Wiese,  besides 
being  in  case  of  need  the  physician  and  surgeon  of  the 
little  European  community,  is  a  very  clever  analytical 
chemist,  botanist,  zoologist  and  horticulturist,  one  of 
those  all-round  men  that  Germany  so  often  produced 
before  the  war  and  so  often  contributed  in  still  earlier 
days  to  the  opening  up  of  the  British  Empire.  He  has 
arrived  in  haste  from  his  dwelling  a  mile  distant  to 
bid  farewell  to  the  gracious  Mrs.  Brentham.  Wiese 
is  spectacled  and  bearded,  a  little  shy  in  manner  with 
strangers,  and  inclined  to  melancholy  when  his  thoughts 
turn  to  the  young  wife  who  accompanied  him  to  Africa 
about  the  time  that  Lucy  and  Maud  came  out  to  join 
husband  and  brother.  Less  fortunate  than  they,  she 
had  died  from  an  attack  of  coast  fever.  Thereafter 
he  had  found  some  mitigation  of  his  loneliness  in  the 
pleasant  home  created  by  Lucy  and  Maud,  so  that  he 
regards  them  with  affection  and  thinks  they  must  be 
the  very  best  type  of  British  women.  As,  however,  he 
has  work  in  progress  at  his  laboratory  of  crucial 


3i4      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

importance,     his     farewells     are    prompt     and     soon 
concluded. 

But  his  colleague,  the  mining  engineer  Hildebrandt, 
stays  longer,  being  very  loath  to  part  with  Maud 
Brentham.  He  is  tall,  passably  handsome,  soldierly, 
well-knit,  a  lint-white  blond  with  violet-grey  eyes  like 
Lucy's.  Though  he  comes  from  Saxony  he  is  more  of 
the  Friesland  type,  in  the  contrast  between  his  straw- 
yellow  hair  (mostly  shaved  to  stubble,  it  is  true)  and 
his  dark-grey  eyes.  He  has  the  further  attraction  to 
which  many  women  would  succumb  in  being  very 
musical  (out  of  business  hours).  In  those  days  before 
gramophones  he  was  a  welcome  guest  for  the  music 
which  welled  up  in  his  brain  and  poured  from  his  fin- 
gers. Roger  had  managed  with  infinite  difficulty  to 
import  and  carry  up  on  an  ox-cart  a  cottage  piano  of 
German  make,  and  on  this  instrument  Hildebrandt 
would  waft  his  listeners  to  other  scenes  —  of  far  away 
and  long  ago  —  with  his  waltzes,  sonatas,  minuets, 
marches,  and  songs  without  words,  sometimes  playing 
by  ear  with  that  wonderful  musician's  memory ;  some- 
times, when  he  took  things  seriously,  from  the  enor- 
mous supply  of  printed  music  which  a  sympathetic 
company  had  allowed  him  to  carry  up-country. 

A  year  after  their  first  meeting  he  had  proposed  to 
Maud,  and  had  renewed  this  offer  of  marriage  on  two 
other  occasions.  But  she  had  been  firm  in  her  refusal, 
though  she  appreciated  his  good  looks  and  frank  man- 
liness, and  almost  loved  him  for  his  music.  But  she 
declared  the  difference  in  their  ages  —  twelve  years  — 
was  an  insuperable  objection;  secondly  she  did  not  wish 
to  marry,  so  that  she  might  always  live  with  Roger  and 
Lucy  and  their  children.  If  they  failed  her  she  would 
make  a  career  of  her  own  —  become  a  New  Woman 
and  agitate  for  women's  rights.  "  On  top  of  all  that, 
nothing  would  induce  me  to  live  in  Germany,  though 
I've  no  doubt  you  are  in  the  right,  and  it's  the  finest 


FIVE  YEARS  LATER  315 

country  in  the  world.  But  I'm  so  interested  in  watch- 
ing English  developments.  When  we  have  finished 
with  Africa  and  made  our  pile  we're  going  to  settle  at 
home  and  improve  our  own  country." 

"  Well  then,  if  you'll  marry  me,  I'll  go  and  live  in 
England  with  you.  .  .  ." 

But  Maud  has  remained  obdurate.  In  spite  of  this 
they  have  settled  down  in  course  of  time,  and  in  bat- 
tling together  against  the  anxieties,  difficulties,  and 
dangers  of  African  colonization,  into  very  good  com- 
rades. Maud  and  Roger  and  even  Lucy  all  speak  Ger- 
man to  some  extent,  and  the  Germans  of  the  Conces- 
sion have  an  even  greater  facility  in  English.  Con- 
versation is  often  a  medley  of  both  languages  and 
much  laughter  at  each  other's  mistakes.  Lucy  con- 
tributes to  the  common  stock  of  entertainment  very 
little  in  the  way  of  talent.  She  is  naturally  fond  of 
music :  sweet  melodies,  deep  harmonies  bring  the  tears 
into  her  eyes ;  gay  tunes  make  her  want  to  dance ;  but 
she  is  no  musician  and  no  dancer.  Maud  has  a  pleas- 
ant contralto  voice  and  is  a  good  accompanist.  Lucy's 
water-colour  painting  has  long  since  been  given  up  as  a 
futility  in  this  age  of  universal  talent.  But  she  makes 
botanical  collections  now  with  some  deftness  and  ability 
under  the  instruction  of  Dr.  Wiese,  whom  in  this  direc- 
tion she  really  helps.  Yet  considering  she  has  borne 
four  healthy  children  in  six  years  of  marriage  no  one 
can  ask  much  from  her  in  the  way  of  accomplishment 
in  the  arts;  and  by  the  time  she  has  attended  to  her 
offspring's  needs  with  the  perfunctory  help  of  Halima 
—  herself  saddled  with  two  brown  hybrids,  bearing 
extravagant  Portuguese  names  —  mended  their  clothes 
and  her  husband's,  and  her  own,  and  generally  directed 
the  housekeeping,  it  is  felt  she  has  done  her  duty  to  the 
little  community.  Nevertheless  though  she  is  not  par- 
ticularly witty,  original,  or  wise,  and  has  no  great 
physical  attraction  for  any  one  but  her  husband,  and 


316      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

is  prone  at  times  to  be  silent  with  a  gentle  melancholy, 
she  has  an  inherent  gift  for  making  people  feel  at  home. 
She  has  a  capacity  for  listening  unweariedly  to  the 
longest  stories,  and  is  a  sympathetic  confidant  to  any 
one  in  trouble. 

So  Bergwerksingenieur  Hildebrandt  said  good-bye 
to  her  with  nearly  as  much  sentiment  as  infused  his 
voice  and  his  hand-grip  when  he  took  leave  of  his 
liebste  Kamerad,  "  Meess  Mowd  "  (Maud  always  said 
that  his  pronunciation  of  her  name  robbed  his  court- 
ship of  all  romance).  He  looks  indeed  so  sad  at  part- 
ing from  these  two  dear  Englishwomen  that  Maud  is 
nearly  tempted  to  kiss  him;  only  that  he  might  have 
misconstrued  her  motherliness. 

The  two  children  in  the  early  morning  —  it  is  just 
after  sunrise  —  are  laughing  and  crowing  with  the  ex- 
citement of  the  forming  safari  and  the  coming  start. 
The  three-year-old  boy,  Ambrose,  is  named  after  his 
grandfather;  the  baby  girl  has  been  called  Sibyl  at  her 
mother's  request.  In  all  probability  Lucy  had  never 
even  so  much  as  suspected  that  there  was  more  than 
cousinly  affection  between  her  husband  and  Lady  Sil- 
chester :  it  would  have  taken  something  like  ocular  evi- 
dence to  make  her  doubt  Roger's  fidelity.  At  first 
Sibyl  had  frightened  and  humbled  her,  but  during  the 
last  year  of  their  association,  at  Engledene,  she  had 
been  coolly  kind  and  had  shown  something  like  grati- 
tude for  Lucy's  care  of  her  ugly  fretful  little  boy.  Be- 
fore Lucy  had  left  to  rejoin  her  husband  in  East  Af- 
rica, Sibyl  had  said :  "I  expect  you'll  have  a  lot  more 
children.  If  you  have  another  girl,  call  it  by  my 
name.  I  should  like  to  be  associated  with  a  child  of 
Roger's.  Promise?  Very  well  then:  in  return  I'll 
give  an  eye  to  little  John  and  fat  Maud  whilst  you  are 
in  Africa.  Indeed  I  cannot  see  why  they  shouldn't 
move  over  here  from  Aldermaston,  when  your  own 


FIVE  YEARS  LATER  317 

people  get  tired  of  them ;  and  share  Clithy's  nursery. 
...  At  any  rate  come  here  on  visits,  and  if  they  quar- 
rel it  will  do  Clithy  a  world  of  good.  His  nurses  give 
him  too  much  sense  of  his  own  importance." 

So  there  was  at  least  this  pleasant  thing  for  them 
to  look  forward  to,  even  though  Lucy's  eyes  were  wet 
with  tears  at  leaving  Iraku.  Engledene  Lodge  as  well 
as  Church  Farm  would  be  open  to  them.  Sibyl,  more 
ambitious  than  ever  of  cutting  a  dash,  playing  a  part  in 
modern  history,  rivalling  Lady  Feenix,  revenging  her- 
self for  snubs  by  the  Brinsley  clan,  lived  much  in  Lon- 
don and  gave  up  Engledene  to  the  quiet  bringing-up 
of  her  only  child.  When  she  went  down  there  it  was 
to  rest  and  repair  her  beauty,  to  transact  humdrum 
estate  business  with  Maurice  Brentham.  Except  for 
the  autumn  shooting  parties  she  entertained  very  little 
at  Engledene.  It  was  in  Scotland  and  above  all  in 
London  that  she  played  the  lavish  hostess  and  sought 
to  undermine  Cabinets  and  bring  a  new  recruit  to  the 
Opposition. 

She  was  now  thirty-four,  and  when  animated  only 
looked  twenty-six.  Rumour  had  assigned  her  several 
love  affairs,  which  out  of  England  —  on  the  Riviera, 
at  Paris,  at  Rome  —  were  said  to  have  been  carried  to 
the  borders  of  indiscretion.  It  had  even  been  an- 
nounced that  "  a  marriage  had  been  arranged  and 
would  shortly  take  place,"  etc.,  between  Lady  Silchester 
and  Sir  Elijah  Tooley  —  but  the  announcement  had 
been  promptly  contradicted,  and  a  month  after  occurred 
the  first  resounding  crack  in  the  Tooley  edifice.  .  .  . 

It  was  curious  how  her  personality  projected  itself 
across  five  thousand  miles  of  land  and  sea  into  Equa- 
torial Africa;  so  that  Lucy  and  perhaps  Roger  should 
both  have  been  thinking  about  her  as  they  were  pre- 
paring to  leave  their  home  in  this  secluded  region. 
Lucy  thought  of  Sibyl  pleasantly  as  of  one  she  no 
longer  feared  because  she  never  desired  to  cross  her 


318      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

path  as  a  rival,  or  contest  her  superiority.  Sibyl  would 
offer  her  a  temporary  home  in  her  home  country  where 
her  children  could  be  riotously  happy,  and  where  Roger 
—  even  —  might  be  tempted  to  join  her  for  a  few 
months  before  resuming  his  strenuous  life  as  a  con- 
queror of  the  wilderness.  Roger  had  held  out  this 
hope  to  alleviate  the  sadness  of  their  approaching  sepa- 
ration. 

He  was  to  accompany  his  wife  and  sister  as  far  as 
Burungi ;  after  which  he  must  return  to  the  Iraku  Hills 
to  take  full  advantage  of  the  dry-season  months  for 
great  projected  developments  of  the  planting  and  min- 
ing industries.  From  Burungi,  now  quite  an  impor- 
tant centre  of  traffic,  whence  well-made  roads  proceed 
coastwards,  with  rest-houses  every  twenty  miles,  Lucy 
and  Maud  and  the  precious  children  would  be  escorted 
to  the  coast  port  of  their  embarkation  by  the  two  Ger- 
man sergeants,  whose  service  Brentham  has  taken  over 
from  the  Stotts.  Their  journey  might  be  broken  by 
a  few  days'  rest  at  Hangodi  in  the  Nguru  country. 
Maud  would  like  to  see  the  scene  of  the  tragedy  and 
of  Lucy's  induction  into  African  life.  Lucy  would 
like  to  pay  a  visit  of  sentiment  to  John  Baines's  grave 
and  to  live  over  again  in  a  sense  of  contrite  remi- 
niscence her  brief  experiences  as  a  missionary's  wife. 
She  wants  to  put  herself  back  in  time  to  where  the 
outlook  seemed  hopeless,  and  realize  the  wide  horizon 
of  happiness  which  now  seems  open  before  her. 

So  —  an  hour  late,  with  all  these  last  thoughts,  mus- 
ing reflections  and  leave-takings  —  Halima  is  howling 
with  grief  because  she  must  remain  behind  —  the  cara- 
van starts  on  its  first  day's  march.  Lucy  from  delicacy 
of  constitution  is  unable  to  ride  much,  so  she  travels 
in  a  machila  with  her  baby.  Maud  bestrides  a  Maskat 
donkey  and  hopes  when  she  returns  they  will  by  that 
time  have  got  horses  safely  through  the  tsetse  belt, 
into  interior  transport  ..."  you  have  so  little  initia- 


FIVE  YEARS  LATER  319 

tive  on  a  donkey,  it  will  never  do  anything  unconven- 
tional." Ambrose  being  thought  too  young  to  ride  a 
donkey  is  handed  over  to  his  special  guardian  and 
chum,  a  tall  Manyamwezi  porter  who  hoists  him  on  to 
his  broad  shoulders.  From  this  elevation  of  six  feet 
he  surveys  the  landscape  as  the  safari  swings  along. 
Some  German  friend  had  given  him  the  previous 
Christmas  a  tin  trumpet,  and  with  blasts  of  this  and 
shouts  of  glee  he  hails  the  sight  of  game  standing  at 
gaze  in  the  distance. 

This  would  have  annoyed  any  sportsman  of  the  cara- 
van had  they  been  bent  on  killing  for  the  pot  or  the 
trophy ;  but  his  father  lets  him  do  this  unrebuked.  He 
is  not  intending  to  transgress  his*  own  by-laws  about 
game  preservation,  and  the  caravan  in  these  bountiful 
days  has  its  food  supply  ensured  from  station  to  sta- 
tion. Still  Roger  reflects  musingly  as  he  rides  up  hill 
and  down  hill  through  the  breadth  of  the  Happy  Valley 
and  up  to  the  low  ridge  and  water-partings  which 
mark  its  limit  and  the  commencement  of  the  long 
descent  through  Irangi,  that  in  one  respect  the  glamour 
of  the  Happy  Valley  has  already  withered  under  the 
practical  need  for  developing  its  resources.  Though 
there  has  been  no  deliberate  big-game  slaughter  in 
hecatombs  as  on  the  British  side  of  the  frontier,  the 
Grant's  gazelles,  the  hartebeests  and  tsesebes,  the 
elands,  zebra,  and  mpala  are  never  to  be  seen  now 
grazing  near  the  road.  They  are  retreating  every  year 
farther  into  the  unprofitable  wastes  away  from  the 
well-beaten  tracks,  noisy  with  the  coming  and  going  of 
carriers,  soldiers,  native  traders,  or  ivory  hunters. 
These  last,  under  some  degree  of  control,  are  even  being 
encouraged  to  pursue  the  elephants  into  the  recesses 
of  the  hills  and  forests  of  the  north;  not  only  to  bring 
down  as  much  ivory  as  possible,  to  sell,  but  because  the 
elephant  has  met  civilization  too  abruptly.  He  has 
contemptuously  knocked  down  the  laboriously  efected 


320      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

telegraph  posts,  and  has  snapped  and  tangled-up  the 
copper  wire.  This  in  its  derelict  condition  is  too  sore 
a  temptation  to  the  native  accustomed  to  regard  copper 
wire  as  a  decorative  article  of  the  highest  value  ...  so 
many  cubits  of  copper  wire  would  buy  a  wife.  So  an 
edict  has  gone  forth  which  Roger  himself  could  not 
protest  against,  that  between  Burungi  and  Kondoa  any 
one,  native  or  European,  may  kill  as  many  elephants 
as  he  pleases.  The  native  herdsmen,  again,  whom  they 
pass  on  the  road  lazily  minding  the  cattle,  sheep  and 
goats,  are  no  longer  in  the  state  of  Paradisiac  nudity 
that  characterized  them  on  that  first  journey  of  Roger 
and  Lucy  down  the  Happy  Valley.  No  one  has  remon- 
strated with  them  on  their  nakedness:  a  hint  from 
Dame  Fashion  has  been  enough.  The  white  men  and 
the  white  men's  black  followers  have  been  clothed, 
so  they  too  must  wear  old  uniforms,  old  coats,  old 
trousefs,  something  in  the  way  of  frowsy  coverings  of 
their  bronze  bodies. 

The  vulgarization  of  Africa  has  begun.  Never 
again  will  there  be  seen  in  this  region  a  condition  of 
unspoilt  Nature  as  it  first  showed  itself  to  the  Bren- 
thams.  But  as  a  set-off  Roger  draws  Lucy's  attention 
to  the  telegraph  line  in  course  of  re-erection,  after  the 
rude  elephantine  protests.  It  is  proceeding  to  a  great 
German  military  post,  but  a  branch  will  presently  be 
carried  to  Iraku  —  almost  as  soon  as  she  is  back  in 
Berkshire  —  and  then  he  and  she  will  be  in  close  touch. 
It  will  be  possible,  at  a  cost  of  a  few  pounds,  to  tele- 
graph to  one  another  and  receive  the  answer  in  a  day 
—  two  days  at  most. 

It  is  four  years  since  the  Brenthams  saw  Burungi, 
for  Roger's  journeys,  meantime,  have  ranged  farther 
and  farther  afield  towards  the  mysterious  —  still  mys- 
terious —  region  between  the  Happy  Valley  and  the 
shores  of  the  Victoria  Nyanza.  Even  then,  when 
Roger  rode  there  to  meet  his  wife  and  Maud  on  their 


FIVE  YEARS  LATER  321 

journey  inland  —  Maud's  first  introduction  to  Real 
Africa  —  the  desolate  Burungi  of  1888  was  no  longer 
recognizable,  with  its  wilderness  of  thorn  bushes  and 
baobabs  on  which  gorged  vultures  were  perching,  its 
lurking  lions  and  hyenas,  as  the  evening  darkened,  its 
flitting,  furtive,  thievish  Wagogo,  the  ruined  station 
of  the  Stotts,  and  no  other  visible  sign  of  habitation. 
Even  four  years  ago,  though  the  vultures  were  still 
there,  it  was  to  feed  on  the  offal  of  a  well-supplied 
market-place,  the  thorn  bushes  had  been  burnt  for  fire- 
wood or  cut  up  for  fences,  and  a  corrugated  iron  hut 
on  the  Stotts'  site,  though  villainously  hot  in  sunshine, 
provided  shelter  and  security  for  stores.  Now  there 
were  brick  houses  and  a  number  of  grass  huts  on  the 
Mission  enclosure  near  the  river.  There  were  half- 
finished  Government  buildings  in  course  of  erection  and 
many  tents  for  the  accommodation  of  a  staff  of  mili- 
tary officials  and  constantly  saluting  white  civilians. 
A  number  of  clothed  Wagogo,  looking  singularly  mean 
in  their  garments  —  though  without  them  they  were 
lithe  and  graceful  savages  —  were,  under  the  raucous 
directions  of  a  white  engineer-sergeant,  laying  down 
a  light  Decauville  railway. 

All  these  activities  had  not  for  the  time  being  made 
Burungi  less  ugly,  and  Roger  hated  the  sight  of  the 
place.  After  a  long  conference  with  the  two  civil- 
spoken  German  sergeants,  who  a  year  previously  had 
been  truly  thankful  to  exchange  the  military  career 
for  employment  under  his  Company,  he  went  through 
the  agony  of  good-bye  —  an  agony  he  would  not  pro- 
tract by  spending  the  night  in  this  noisy,  discomfort- 
able  place.  He  compressed  his  embraces  of  wife  and 
children  —  the  latter  mystified  and  yowling  with  the 
dim  realization  of  bereavement  —  his  wringing  of 
Maud's  hands,  his  directions  to  telegraph  at  every  op- 
portunity till  they  got  on  board,  and  hang  the  cost  — 
into  two  hours;  after  which,  though  only  two  more 


322      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

hours  of  daylight  remained,  he  rode  away,  back  to 
their  camp  of  the  previous  night:  knowing  that  further 
lingering  might  end  in  his  deciding  to  accompany  these 
two  dear  women  and  prattling  babes  all  the  way  to  the 
coast  and  perhaps  all  the  way  to  England. 

And  it  was  essential  to  their  future  welfare  that  he 
should  stay  where  he  was  and  not  claim  a  holiday  till 
certain  results  had  been  achieved  and  certain  proofs 
of  easily  exploited  wealth  had  been  obtained. 

But  it  was  a  melancholy  Roger  who,  six  days  after- 
wards, rode  back  into  the  lovely  amphitheatre  in  the 
Iraku  hills  where  he  had  made  his  home.  His  Maskat 
donkey  showed  signs  of  having  being  hard  ridden ;  his 
carriers  averred  that  Master,  ordinarily  so  considerate 
of  their  fatigue,  so  jolly  on  the  line  of  march,  had 
spurred  them  on  remorselessly,  had  seemed  to  pass 
wakeful  nights  and  had  eaten  his  camp  meals  with  poor 
appetite.  Roger  himself  felt  a  few  more  partings  like 
this  would  make  his  earthly  life  unbearable.  Oh  that 
there  were  some  truth  in  the  silly  hymn  chorus  that  the 
Stotts  delighted  in  making  their  pupils  sing :  "  Here 
we  meet  to  part  no  more,  part  no  more,  part  no  more !  " 
He  should  have  been  firm  with  Lucy  and  bade  her  stay 
till  he  himself  was  ready  to  go.  And  yet  when  would 
he  be  ready  to  go,  with  Phantom  Fortune  always  beck- 
oning yet  never  disclosing  the  final  hoard  ? 

There  was  something  in  Lucy's  face  which  restrained 
him  from  insisting  that  she  should  stay.  Dr.  Wiese 
had  hinted  at  a  growing  anaemia  which  should  be 
checked.  Her  dominating  feeling  was  a  fear  that  she 
might  lose  the  precious  children  born  to  her  here  in  the 
wilderness  and  be  forgotten  by  those  she  had  left  be- 
hind. He  must  not  take  the  thing  too  tragically.  If 
Hildebrandt  continued  to  get  these  satisfactory  assays 
and  could  trace  the  gold-bearing  reef  a  sufficient  dis- 
tance towards  the  western  limit  of  the  Concession;  or 
if  on  the  other  hand  he  could  find  the  matrix  of  the 


FIVE  YEARS  LATER  323 

diamonds,  and  not  merely  these  minute  brilliants  in  the 
gravel  of 'the  mountain  streams,  their  main  doubts  and 
difficulties  would  be  relieved  and  he  could  depart  for  a 
holiday  at  home. 

The  return  to  his  house  was  some  alleviation  of  his 
bereavement.  It  was  so  associated  with  the  presence 
of  wife  and  sister  and  of  his  babies.  The  afternoon 
sun  was  behind  him ;  it  would  soon  drop  below  the  blue 
mountain  wall  which  was  a  rampart  of  protection  to 
the  site  he  had  chosen  for  his  European  settlement. 
How  often  he  and  Lucy  had  stood  here  in  blue  shadow 
and  looked  towards  the  sun-flooded  east  beyond  the 
shade  of  the  escarpment,  towards  the  Happy  Valley! 
This  was  just  such  a  close  to  the  day  as  they  had  loved 
to  witness  three  hundred  days  out  of  the  three  hundred 
and  sixty-five  of  the  year.  To  the  north  stretched  the 
lake  of  cobalt  blue,  with  its  irregular  blush-tinted  rim 
of  flamingo  hosts.  South-east  of  the  lake,  beyond 
lush  swamps  and  green  plantations,  were  the  Umbugwe 
villages  and  the  Stotts'  large  station  —  little  points, 
clusters,  and  pencils  of  brown  and  white.  The  whitest 
speck  was  the  Stotts'  new  Chapel.  He  had  been  pres- 
ent at  its  opening  ceremony  a  month  ago  —  to  gratify 
Mrs.  Stott.  Beyond  lake  and  villages  were  the  gath- 
ering masses  of  mighty  mountains,  ending  north-east- 
wards in  the  snow-tipped  pyramid  of  Meru  and  —  on 
this  clear  evening  —  in  the  supernatural  snowy  dome 
of  Kibo.  What  a  prospect!  And  yet  he  would  will- 
ingly exchange  for  it  the  view  over  southern  Berkshire 
from  the  down  of  Farleigh  Wallop. 

He  entered  his  house.  The  presence  of  Lucy  and 
Maud  seemed  as  if  it  must  be  material,  not  merely 
spiritual.  He  looked  into  their  rooms.  They  had 
been  considerately  tidied  before  they  left,  and  showed 
little  sign  of  packing  up  and  departure.  Lucy  was  a 
good  house- wife,  he  reflected,  and  she  probably  judged 
that  in  her  absence  he  might  want  to  entertain  guests, 


324      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

colleagues  come  on  business,  Government  officials.  So 
that  her  room  and  his  sister's  were  ready  prepared  for 
occupation.  The  nursery  was  a  little  more  desolate. 
The  toys  had  been  given  away  to  Halima's  children. 
If  ever  Ambrose  and  Sibyl  came  back  —  and  how  un- 
likely that  they  would! — they  would  have  grown  far 
beyond  the  love  of  toys.  Maud  had  left  most  of  her 
songs  on  the  top  of  the  piano.  She  could  get  newer 
ones  in  England.  The  vases  were  filled  with  fresh 
flowers  from  bush  and  garden.  Halima  had  put  them 
there,  faithful  to  her  mistress's  directions.  .  .  . 

Halima  now  called  him  to  his  tea,  on  the  verandah. 
The  table  was  laid  with  all  the  care  that  Lucy  was 
wont  to  bestow  on  it.  Andrade  the  cook  had  baked 
a  nice  cake  and  even  attempted  something  resembling 
a  muffin  —  a  kind  of  compromise  between  a  muffin  and 
a  tea  cake,  due  to  a  confounding  of  Maud's  instruc- 
tions. Roger's  eyes  filled  with  tears.  Halima,  depart- 
ing with  a  brass  tray,  answered  with  two  loud  sobs  in 
her  facile  grief.  Yet  a  few  years  before  she  had  been 
ready  to  abandon  her  mistress  in  distress  when  she  was 
stranded  in  Mr.  Callaway's  unsavoury  depot  at  Un- 
guja.  His  eyes  followed  her  portly  form,  magnifi- 
cently swathed  in  red  Indian  cottons,  with  tolerant  good 
will.  There  was  a  good  deal  of  the  humbug  about  all 
these  black  people,  but  it  was  kindly  humbug.  He  was 
grateful  for  this  comprehension  of  his  sorrow,  for  this 
effort  to  carry  out  his  wife's  instructions  that  the  com- 
forts and  little  elegancies  of  their  home  should  be  con- 
tinued after  her  absence. 

Then  the  tame  Crowned  cranes  came  below  the  ve- 
randah to  be  fed  with  bread  and  cake  as  Maud  had  en- 
couraged them  to  do.  His  black-and-tan  English  ter- 
rier, confined  for  safety  in  the  cook's  quarters  during 
his  absence,  had  been  released  and  now  came  tearing 
up  the  steps  and  rushing  along  the  verandah  till  it  was 
in  contact  with  his  lowered  hand,  volleying  forth  a  long 


FIVE  YEARS  LATER  325 

succession  of  eager  barks  of  joy  and  whimpers  of 
hysterical  distress  and  relief  at  Master's  absence  and 
return.  .  .  . 

In  the  evening  after  dinner  Wiese,  Hildebrandt  and 
Riemer  (Plantation  Manager)  came  up  to  pay  their 
respects  to  the  Herr  Direktor  and  give  him  an  informal 
report  of  all  that  had  occurred  during  his  absence. 
They  tactfully  said  little  about  his  bereavement,  though 
Hildebrandt  heaved  some  theatrical  sighs  at  the  sight 
of  Maud's  music  on  the  piano.  But  they  had  much  to 
say  in  German  and  English  that  was  interesting  and 
encouraging.  So  they  sat  up  late  into  the  night  talk- 
ing and  discussing.  Andrade  sent  them  up  an  im- 
promptu supper,  wine  and  beer  were  drunk  in  the 
moderation  imposed  by  their  then  rarity  —  owing  to 
transport  difficulties  —  and  when  they  finally  departed 
at  one  in  the  morning,  under  the  firmament  of  blazing 
stars,  with  lemon-yellow  lanterns  to  light  their  path 
back  to  their  respective  quarters,  the  grass-widower 
betook  himself  to  his  couch  in  a  more  resigned  frame  of 
mind.  There  would  be  great  doings,  great  strokes  to 
hew  out  fortunes  for  all  of  them,  within  the  next  few 
months. 

A  fortnight  afterwards,  by  swift  runner  from  Kon- 
doa,  came  a  telegraphic  message  despatched  from 
Saadani : 

Arrived  here  safely.  Leave  for  Unguja  to-morrowr 
God  bless  you. —  LUCY  MAUD. 

Thereafter  followed  long  day-rides  of  inspection,  an 
occasional  week's  absence  from  home  studying  possi- 
bilities in  remote  parts  of  the  Concession,  holding  con- 
ferences with  the  Stotts,  laying  cases  and  possibilities 
of  special  difficulty  before  the  German  officer  com- 
manding at  Kondoa.  His  talks  with  the  Stotts  were 
directed  to  several  ends.:  urging  the  Stotts  to  get  into 


326      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

the  confidence  of  all  the  native  tribes  —  Bantu,  Ha- 
mitic,  Nilotic  —  of  the  Concession's  area  and  find  out 
how  far  their  interests  might  be  subserved  by  the  full 
exploitation  of  the  animal,  vegetable  and  mineral 
wealth  of  this  patch  of  East  Africa.  "  Unless  we 
carry  the  natives  with  us,"  he  would  say,  "  this  enter- 
prise must  eventually  fail,  wither  up;  because,  boast 
of  the  climate  as  we  may,  the  hard  manual  labour  can- 
not be  performed  by  white  men :  we  must  fall  back  on 
the  native.  Now  half  the  men-natives  in  these  parts 
are  picturesque  to  look  at,  graceful  figure  and  all  that; 
but  they  shirk  hard  work.  They  prefer  to  loll  about 
in  the  sun  or  to  run  after  women.  Can't  you  put  some 
ambition  into  'em?  Teach  them  something  besides 
these  rotten  hymns  and  prayers  that  are  meaningless 
to  them?" 

"  But  we  do,"  said  Mrs.  Stott.  "  You  haven't 
looked  over  our  school  for  two  years,  I  believe.  You 
seem  to  have  got  hymn-singing  on  the  brain.  Our 
hymns  translated  by  us  are  not  rubbish  and  the  natives 
enjoy  singing  them.  ..." 

"  I  don't  doubt  they  do,  though  I  don't  see  what  use 
it  is.  Neither  they  nor  the  prayers  prevent  the  Al- 
mighty from  sending  the  flights  of  locusts.  .  .  .  Or 
rather  these  appeals  and  this  excessive  praise  do  not 
stimulate  the  Divine  power  to  do  something  to  abate 
Africa's  myriad  plagues.  It  is  always  poor  Man  — 
and  most  of  all,  poor  White  man  —  who  has  to  work 
his  brain  and  body  to  exhaustion  to  set  right  what  Na- 
ture perversely  sets  wrong.  Here  am  I,  trying  to 
abate  the  grasshopper  plague  in  our  tobacco  plantations 
by  encouraging  the  domestication  of  the  Crowned 
crane.  Yet  the  natives  won't  take  any  interest  in  this 
idea,  though  the  Crowned  cranes  feed  themselves  and 
have  charming  manners.  Can't  you  push  this  matter  in 
your  schools?  Couldn't  you  preach  a  sermon  on  the 
uses  of  the  Crowned  crane?  " 


FIVE  YEARS  LATER  327 

On  another  occasion  he  put  a  further  difficulty  be- 
fore the  Ewart  Stotts.  "Look  here!  I'm  going  to 
take  you  again  into  my  confidence.  I  want  you  to  rind 
me  an  assistant,  some  one  of  your  own  kin  in  Australia 
who  would  come  out  here  at  short  notice  on  an  agree- 
ment for  three  years  —  I  even  want  two  men,  one  of 
them  versed  in  shorthand  and  typewriting  who  could 
be  my  secretary.  I  don't  know  any  one  in  England 
who  isn't  either  a  rotter  or  a  potential  rotter,  or  hasn't 
got  a  job  already.  There's  my  brother  Geoffrey,  but 
he's  a  Commander  now  in  the  Navy,  getting  on  fine, 
and  simply  wouldn't  think  of  chucking  the  service  to 
come  here.  My  other  brother  is  well  suited  as  a  land- 
agent.  I  want  something  Australian,  some  one  as  like 
you  two  as  possible.  I  don't  mind  a  moderate  amount 
of  religion,  as  long  as  it  doesn't  waste  their  time  on 
week-days,  and  they  can't  be  too  teetotal  for  my  liking. 
No  Whisky-drinker  need  apply." 

"  Why,  I  believe  we  know  of  the  very  two,  at  any 
rate  of  the  principal  one,"  said  Mrs.  Stott:  "My 
nephew  Phil  Ewart.  I  haven't  seen  him  since  he  was 
a  baby,  but  my  brother's  wife  writes  to  me  now  and 
again  and  says  he's  doing  very  well  on  a  big  sheep  run 
in  Queensland.  .  .  ." 

"Well  then,  look  here:  let's  draft  a  cablegram  that 
I  can  send  off  from  the  coast.  I'll  guarantee  him  a 
year's  salary  and,  if  he  turns  out  satisfactory,  a  three 
years'  agreement  —  £500  a  year.  He  can  choose  any 
likely  young  fellow  .  .  .  good  character  .  .  .  ab- 
stainer .  .  .  serve  as  clerk  .  .  .  £200  a  year  com- 
mence .  .  .  take  steamer  Australia-Durban,  and  Ger- 
man steamer  Durban-Saadani,  and  so  on,  up-country. 
If  I  get  'em  here  by  November  I  can  give  'em  three 
months'  trial  before  I  set  out  for  home.  .  .  .  Must 
take  a  holiday  next  year  and  bring  my  wife  out  after- 
wards. Don't  like  to  leave  this  business  without  a 
Britisher  in  it  to  watch  my  interests,  don't  you  know. 


328      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

and   advise   me   how   things   are   going   while   I   am 
away." 

So  they  arranged  the  matter  between  them.     Then 
Mrs.  Stott  said :     "  I've  a  funny  proposition  to  make. 
A  week  ago  I  received  a  letter  from  Ann  Jamblin  that 
was  ...  at  Hangodi.  .  .  .  Ann  Anderson  she  is  now. 
She  saw   Lucy  there  five  weeks  ago  and  was  much 
touched  at  her  calling  on  them.     Says  she  took  a  spe- 
cial fancy  to  your  dear,  sweet,  pretty  children.     Her 
own  little  girl  is  very  ailing.     Well,  now  she  goes  on 
to  say  old  Mrs.  Doland,  who  was  a  great  supporter  of 
their  Mission,  has  died  and  only  left  the  East  African 
Mission  £5,000.     For  this  and  other  reasons  the  Mis- 
sion thinks  of  giving  up  Hangodi,  as  it  is  quite  an  iso- 
lated station  now,  and  all  their  others  are  in  the  British 
Sphere.  .  .  .  Well,   to  put   it   quite  plain,   as  you're 
impatient  to  be  gone  —  oh,  /  know  by  the  way  you're 
tapping  your  gaiters  —  how  would  it  be  if  your  Con- 
cession or  you  or  some  one  advanced  our  Mission  £150 
for  out-of-pocket  expenses  —  so  as  to  move  quickly, 
don't  you  know?     And  we  sent  word  to  Ann  and  her 
husband  to  join  us  as  soon  as  they  had  definite  author- 
ity to  evacuate  Hangodi.     The  German  Government,  I 
believe,  are  going  to  buy  the  station.     If  we  got  Ann 
and  her  husband  up  here  the  couple  of  them  would 
strengthen  our  hands  mightily  and  then  we  could  give 
some  of  that  worldly   instruction  you're   so  anxious 
about.     Or    make    it    up    in     some    way    of    help. 
Strengthen  the  British  element  here.     For  although  I 
don't  hold  with  your  views  about  Providence  one  little 
bit,  and  believe  the  World  was  made  in  six  days  and 
am  surprised  every  now  and  again  that  you  aren't 
struck  down  for  your  audacity,  not  to  say  blasphemy, 
yet  something  tells  me  you  and  we  are  really  working 
for  the  same  Divine  ends.  ..." 

Roger   said   the  matter  should   certainly   have  his 
attention.     (Before  he  left  for  England  the  follow- 


FIVE  YEARS  LATER  329 

ing  Spring  Ann  and  Eb  were  members  of  the  Stott 
Mission,  and  the  Stotts  were  able  to  open  another  sta- 
tion and  school  in  the  Iraku  country.) 

The  months  flew  by  through  autumn,  winter  and 
spring.     Roger  established  a  stud  farm  in  the  Happy 
Valley  where  he  could  locate  a  captured  dozen  of  zebra 
and   interbreed  with   Maska   donkeys  .  .  .  perhaps   a 
manageable,  large-bodied  zebra-mule  might  solve  some 
of  their  transport  difficulties  in  the  regions  of  the  tse-tse 
fly.     He  introduced  shorthorn  cattle  from  South  Af- 
rica to  mingle  with  the  native  oxen  and  improve  the 
milk   supply.     He   imported    from   Natal   six   Basuto 
ponies,   two  stallions   and   four  mares.     He   ordered 
three  safety  bicycles  —  the  great  new  invention  or  com- 
bination of  inventions.     He  and  his  German  engineers, 
reinforced  by  a  clever  Swiss  sent  out  by  the  German 
directorate,   gave  special  consideration  to  the  water- 
falls of  Iraku,  to  harness  them  to  turbines  and  pro 
duce  electric  light.     This  power  would   feed  electric 
dynamos  when  the  progress  of  the  railway  construction 
enabled  such  heavy  things  to  reach  tne  Happy  Valley. 
They  laid  out  great  coffee  plantations  and  experimented 
in  tea  and  quinine.     It  was  hoped  the  natives  might 
take  up  all  these  cultures  in  time,  on  their  own  account, 
as  they  had  done  that  of  cacao  on  the  Gold  Coast  and 
in  the  German  Cameroons. 

The  day  for  his  departure  in  the  early  spring  came 
ever  nearer  and  nearer.  The  two  Australians  arrived, 
went  down  with  fever,  recovered  and  eventually  proved 
the  right  stuff,  especially  young  Philip  Ewart.  Mrs. 
Stott  said  she  would  see  he  did  not  get  into  mischief 
while  the  Director  was  absent  in  England.  She  would 
also  give  an  eye  to  the  Brenthams'  house  and  the 
doings  of  Andrade  and  Halima  as  caretakers. 

There  was  therefore  little  cause  for  anxiety  on 
Roger's  part  as  he  made  his  preparations  for  a  six- 
months'  absence,  save  the  rumoured  doings  of  a  cer- 


330      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

tain  Stolzenberg,  a  mysterious  German  hunter  who, 
coming  from  the  British  Sphere,  had  established  himself 
near  the  north-west  escarpment  of  Lake  Manyara,  ap- 
parently on  the  border  of  the  Happy  Valley  Conces- 
sion (Glucklichesthals  Konzession). 


CHAPTER  XIX 

TROUBLE    WITH    STOLZENBERG 

TN  those  days  —  to  parody  a  line  of  Holy  Writ  —  it 
•••  might  be  said,  "  To  every  man,  a  crater  or  two  " ; 
if  you  were  referring  to  the  wilderness  which  lay  be- 
tween Kilimanjaro  and  the  southern  Rift  Valleys,  and 
to  the  strange  adventurers  who  in  the  'nineties  ranged 
up  and  down  the  East  African  interior  between  Baringo 
on  the  north  and  the  Happy  Valley  on  the  south,  over 
a  region  of  elevated  steppe  land,  isolated  mountains  of 
immense  height,  and  extinct  volcanoes.  Some  of  these 
lawless  men  were  accumulating  considerable  wealth  in 
ivory,  sheep  and  cattle.  They  wanted  fortresses  in 
which  to  live  and  store  their  plunder,  or  the  spoil  of 
their  chase,  the  elephant  tusks,  the  rhino  horns,  the 
lion  and  leopard  skins,  the  black  and  white  mantles  of 
the  long-haired  colobus  monkeys,  the  ostrich  plumes; 
even  the  roughly-cured  skins  of  the  rosy  flamingoes 
which  were  becoming  an  article  of  great  demand  in  the 
plumage  trade.  For  this  purpose  the  large  and  small 
craters  of  presumably  extinct  volcanoes  were  ready  to 
hand;  as  though  Nature  had  anticipated  their  wants. 
Most  of  these. were  surrounded  on  the  inside  by  the 
nearly  continuous,  circular  wall  of  the  crater,  only 
broken  down  at  one  point  where  the  lava  or  nowadays 
a  stream  of  water  (the  overflow  of  a  little  crater  lake) 
issued  from  the  crater  floor.  Here  with  piled  stones  it 
was  easy  to  restrict  the  gap  and  hold  the  entrance 
against  any  savage  enemy  without  artillery.  These 
defences  were,  of  course,  prepared  against  the  Masai 
and  not  with  any  idea  of  defying  a  White  Government, 


332      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

whose  advent  at  that  time  seemed  very  problematical : 
at  any  rate  a  White  Government  that  would  interfere 
to  protect  the  natives,  to  obstruct  elephant  killing,  or 
regulate  the  movements  of  cattle  between  a  disease- in- 
fected area  and  one  that  still  possessed  uninfected 
flocks  and  herds. 

It  was  to  one  of  these  craters  —  very  red  in  colour  — 
that  Roger  Brentham  rode  up  at  the  end  of  March, 
1897,  after  three  days'  difficult  journey  from  the  south. 
He  halted  his  little  safari  of  armed  porters  and  his 
four  Somali  gun-men  on  a  level  tableland  in  front  of 
the  gap  in  the  crater  walls ;  a  gap  cleverly  closed  by  a 
huge  door  of  yew  planks  and  a  bridge  of  yew  trunks 
thrown  over  the  issuing  brook,  with  stones  piled  on  top 
to  a  height  of  twenty  feet.  There  were  obvious  indi- 
cations that  the  walls  and  woodwork  were  loopholed  for 
gun-fire.  He  called  several  times  loudly  in  Swahili 
and  German  to  arouse  an  answer  and  rapped  on  the 
cumbrous  door. 

Presently  a  smaller  door  within  the  great  one  opened 
and  there  emerged  a  sullen-looking  negro  giant,  prob- 
ably a  Makua  from  the  south.  [Such  offer  themselves 
for  service  in  Unguja.]  "Unatakaje?"  he  asked  in 
Swahili.  "  I  want  to  see  your  Bwana  —  I  do  not  know 
his  '  native  '  name,"  said  Brentham,  "  but  just  take  this 
'  karata  '  to  him  and  he  will  read  my  name ;  and  say  I 
wish  to  see  him.  Meantime  I  will  make  a  camp  here." 

The  Makua  doorkeeper  or  watchman  returned 
within,  and  possibly  an  hour  passed  before  anything 
further  happened,  during  which  Brentham  had  his  tent 
erected,  and  arranged  for  his  men  —  they  were  travel- 
ling very  light  —  to  make  their  sleeping-places  around 
it. 

The  small  door  was  again  reopened  and  there  stepped 
out  a  remarkable-looking  man  of  over  six  feet,  with 
enormous  recurved  moustaches,  a  sombrero  hat,  jack- 
boots and  a  general  swashbuckling  air  and  a  visible  re- 


TROUBLE  WITH  STOLZENBERG         333 

volver  in  the  broad  belt  that  held  up  his  breeches.  He 
walked  slowly  towards  Roger  who  advanced  to  meet 
him. 

"  Did  you  come  to  see  me?  "  he  asked  in  English. 

"I  did,"  said  Roger;  "that  is,  if  your  name  is 
Stolzenberg?  " 

"  It  is  ...  for  to-day  —  at  any  rate.  Well :  here 
I  am.  You  come  to  tell  me  '  it  is  Easter  Sunday,  and 
Christ  Is  Risen,'  like  the  Russians  do?  " 

"  Why,  is  it  Easter  Sunday  ?  Dear  me !  I  had  no 
idea.  If  so,  I  might  have  chosen  another  time.  Still, 
as  I  am  here  and  as  you  are  here  —  and  I  fancy  you  are 
often  absent?  —  I  should  be  obliged  if  we  could  have 
a  talk,  come  to  an  understanding,  don't  you  know  ?  " 
(There  was  no  answering  friendliness  in  the  fierce  face 
that  looked  into  his,  the  face  of  a  perfectly  ruthless 
man,  eyes  with  bloodshot  whites,  wide  mouth  with  pale 
flaccid  lips,  showing  strong  tobacco-stained  teeth,  prom- 
inent cheek  bones,  lowering  brows,  a  massive  jaw,  and 
here  and  there  an  old  duelling  scar. 

"An  unnerstanding?  "  he  said  sneeringly.  "What 
about  ?  /  unnerstand  you.  I  know  who  you  are,  now 
I  see  your  card.  You  are  Captain  Brentham.  Once 
you  were  Consul  ...  at  ...  Unguja.  Then  you 
run  away  with  missionary's  wife — and  —  you  are 
...  no  more  Consul.  You  do  somesing  shocking, 
nicht  wahrf  It  is  so  easy  to  shock  your  Gover'ment 
—  and  now  von  Wissmann  —  that  Morphinsaufer  — 
he  gif  you  a  Concession.  An'  I  suppose  you  come  now 
to  say  I  trespass  on  your  Concession  ?  Very  well  then, 
I  do,  an'  I  don'  care  a  damn  for  you  or  for  any  Gover'- 
ment you  like  to  name.  I  make  this  my  home  six, 
seven  years  ago  and  no  one  come  to  turn  me  out  now, 
unless  they  fight  me  first.  .  .  ." 

"  I  haven't  come  to  turn  you  out,"  said  Roger. 
Stolzenberg  laughs  noisily  and  contemptuously.  .  .  . 
"  It's  not  my  business  to  do  so.  I  have  come  with  a 


334 

very  small  following  to  make  your  acquaintance,  to 
find  out  for  myself  what  you  were  like  and  to  see 
whether  it  was  possible  to  deal  with  you  .  .  ."  (As 
he  is  talking  he  sees  that  through  the  open  doorway  of 
the  stronghold  there  are  issuing  a  large  number  of 
armed  black  men,  dressed  like  the  coast  people  —  per- 
haps a  hundred),  "  to  deal  with  you  as  one  white  man 
might  deal  with  another.  But  before  I  can  even  put 
our  case  —  our  Concession's  case  —  before  you,  you 
commence  by  insulting  me  and  making  a  lying  state- 
ment about  my  wife  —  and  you  probably  now  intend 
threatening  me  by  an  attack  with  your  Askari l —  who 
I  see  are  gathering  up  behind  you." 

"  These  men,"  said  Stolzenberg,  glancing  round  at 
them  and  shouting  an  order  to  them  to  be  seated,  "  are 
only  there  to  make  sure.  You  Britishers  are  always 
up  to  some  trick.  I  thought  just  to  show  you  I  stand 
no  nonsense.  As  to  what  I  say  .  .  .  a-bout  Meeses  .  .  . 
Brentham,  I  ...  only  .  .  .  say  .  .  .  what  your  .  .  . 
own  country-men  say  on  coast.  But  let  that  pass. 
What  is  this  unnerstanding  you  propose  to  me  —  a 
Partnership  ?  Well,  I  am  open  to  a  bargain.  What  is 
it  to  be  ?  What  terms  do  you  offer?  " 

"  I  haven't  come  here  to  discuss  any  such  thing.  I 
came  to  say  this.  As  you  ask  the  question,  this  ex- 
traordinary place —  I  suppose  it  is  the  crater  of  a  vol- 
cano ?  —  does  not  lie  within  our  limits.  You  are  not 
trespassing  on  our  property.  But  for  the  past  nine 
months  or  so  we  have  had  many  complaints  about  you 
or  about  your  men.  You  raid  the  natives,  you  take 
the  Masai  cattle  and  apparently  drive  them  into  this 
stronghold.  You  even  kidnap  the  Iraku  women.  .  .  ." 
"  I  do  not  kidnap.  .  .  .  They  come  here  of  their 
own  pleasure  .  .  .  they  are  free  to  go  if  they  like. 
But  they  like  my  men  much  better  than  their  own  hus- 
bands who  cannot  gif  them  closs  or  beads.  ..." 
1  Soldiers. 


TROUBLE  WITH  STOLZENBERG         335 

"  And  finally,"  continued  Roger,  almost  choking  with 
the  effort  to  speak  in  a  level  voice  and  not  send  a  fist 
smashing  into  the  large  face  that  bends  over  his  so 
threateningly,  "  finally,  you  drove  away  by  force  two 
of  our  prospecting  parties  at  the  north  end  of  the 
Lake  and  .  .  ." 

"  Those  men,"  shouted  Stolzenberg  ..."  they 
.  .  .  they  come  just  to  spy  out  my  defences  .  .  .  but 
look  here.  You  and  I  are  big  fools  —  p'raps  I  am 
bigger  fool  than  you.  ...  I  lose  my  temper  first,  I  say 
things  a-bout  a  la-dy  which  perhaps  are  not  true.  .  .  . 
I  apologize.  .  .  .  Nutting  they  say  on  the  coast  is 
true!  Look  at  the  lies  they  tell  about  me!  "  (a  bois- 
terous laugh).  "  They  say  at  Mombasa  I  am  biggest 
blaggard  unhung.  That  is  —  what  you  say  ?  ex-agger- 
a-ted?  And  look  at  the  lies  Bri-tish  missionaries  tell 
about  my  friend,  Doctor  Peters.  It  is  that  make  me 
so  angry  just  now.  German  Gover'ment  belief  these 
lies  and  send  my  good  friend  away.  And  then  there 
is  a  fine  Englishman  I  know,  a  nobleman  in  your  coun- 
try, a  Sir  —  Sir  Wil-low-by  Pat-terne.  You  would 
hardly  belief  the  things  they  say  a-bout  him  —  always 
be-hind  his  back.  .  .  ." 

"  So  you  know  Willowby  Patterne,"  said  Roger 
(greatly  interested). 

"  I  haf  seen  him  once  or  twice,"  replied  Stolzenberg, 
becoming  suspicious.  "  But  you  do  not  come  here,  I 
sup-pose,  to  talk  about  him?  You  come  to  make  my 
acquaintance.  Well:  you  haf  made  it.  Now  you  leaf 
me  alone  and  I  will  leaf  you  alone.  I  ...  what  you 
say  ?  I  '  will  not  return  your  call '  ?  My  quarrel  with 
the  Masai  is  not  your  business.  I  haf  —  what  do  we 
say?  I  haf  'vendetta'  against  the  Masai.  When  I 
first  come  out  to  East  Africa  on  my  own  business  I  fit 
out  a  safari  and  travel  to  Kenya  to  buy  ivory.  I  do  no 
harm  to  Masai,  but  they  attack  my  camp,  they  kill  a 
young  German  man  with  me,  my  very  great  friend; 


336      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

they  kill  most  of  my  men  —  and  see!  They  try  to 
kill  me  "  (pulls  up  shirt  and  shows  long  scar  over  ribs 
on  left  side) ,  "  and  they  kill  my  dogs.  Only  when  they 
see  Kikuyu  coming  down  in  large  war  party  do  they 
leaf  off  stabbing  and  go  away  with  most  of  my  trade 
goods.  The  Kikuyu  carry  me  up  to  their  village  and 
save  my  life  —  I  haf  always  been  good  friend  to 
Kikuyu  since. —  You  ask  them!  Well  now,  I  get  my 
own  back.  Whenever  I  see  Masai  now,  I  shoot.  I 
put  fear  of  death  into  them.  .  .  ." 

"  This  is  an  interesting  bit  of  biography,"  said 
Brentham,  "  but  I  thought  those  lawless  days  were 
gone  by.  I  haven't  heard  the  Masai  version  of  your 
story.  Perhaps  they  had  some  excuse.  At  any  rate, 
they  were  not  the  same  clan  as  the  Masai  round  here, 
friends  of  mine  for  years;  and  you've  no  right  to  make 
war  on  them.  Outside  our  concession,  that's  not  my 

affair.     Your  Government " 

"  Do  not  say  my  Gover'ment,"  roared  Stolzenberg. 
"  It  is  not  mine.  I  do  not  ask  for  it !  I  am  my  own 
gover'ment.  I  was  in  these  countries  before  ever  came 
any  German  or  any  British  Gover'ment." 

"  Well  then,  the  Government  of  this  region,  the  Gov- 
ernment that  has  got  the  most  right  to  govern  .  .  . 
I  say  —  No !  you  must  hear  me  out  before  I  go  —  what 
you  may  do  outside  our  concession  is  between  you  and 
them.  But  if  after  this  warning  you  interfere  with 
our  people,  the  people  inside  this  Concession  I  am 
managing,  and  in  which  I'm  a  magistrate,  you'll  run 
up  against  me,  and  I  shall  shoot  you  at  sight  like  you 
do  the  Masai.  .  .  ." 

"  All  right!  Haf  a  drink  before  you  go?  " 
"  No,  I  won't,"  said  Roger.  And  wheeling  round 
on  his  listening  men,  he  shouted :  "  Pigeni  kambi. 
Maneno  yamekwisha.  Twende  zetu."  Then,  so  that 
his  leave-taking  might  lose  none  of  its  abruptness,  he 
strode  to  where  his  Maskat  donkey  was  tethered,  re- 


TROUBLE  WITH  STOLZENBERG         337 

leased  it,  jumped  into  the  saddle,  and  rode  slowly  away 
till  he  was  out  of  sight,  below  the  space  of  level  ground. 
There  he  waited  till  his  men  had  rejoined  him  with 
their  light  loads.  The  first  to  arrive  were  the  four 
Somali  gun-men.  They  had  long  since  learnt  to  speak 
Swahili  and  they  said,  laughing,  in  relief  that  the  pala- 
ver had  ended  without  recourse  to  firearms :  "  Ulim- 
shinda  na  maneno,  Bwana  mkubwa,  ulimshinda,  yule 
Mdachi.  Walakini,  ukiondoka,  akasema  watu  wake. 
'  Simchuki,  yule  Mwingrezi.  Mwanaume.'  "  1 

Roger  rode  away  musing  from  this  encounter,  or 
rather  rode  and  walked  over  an  exceedingly  rough 
country  with  scarcely  a  native  path  or  sign  of  habita- 
tion, a  country  depopulated  doubtless  by  former  wars 
and  raids  of  tribe  on  tribe:  for  it  was  well  watered. 

The  tall  clumps  of  Euphorbias  gave  the  red  land- 
scape a  sinister  look,  for  their  articulated  branches 
looked  like  a  conjunction  of  gigantic  scorpions,  bodies 
meeting  together  and  stinging  tails  erected  in  the  air; 
the  fleshy-leaved  aloes  of  deep  bottle-green  sent  up 
blood-red  stalks  of  blood-red  tubular  flowers;  on  the 
higher  ground  there  were  many  rust-red  or  red-lead- 
coloured  "red-hot  pokers" — what  the  initiated  call 
Kniphofias.  The  country  somehow  suggested  blood 
and  iron ;  for  the  old  and  faded  Euphorbias  might  have 
been  cut  out  of  rusty  metal,  and  iron  ore  was  so  obvi- 
ously permeating  the  rocks. 

He  mused  on  the  violence  to  which  Africa  always 
seemed  a  prey.  The  reign  of  law  in  East  Africa  in 
both  the  British  and  German  spheres  seemed  to  be  pre- 
ceded by  the  reign  of  the  outlaws.  He  knew  enough 
as  a  traveller  and  an  ex-official,  and  as  a  resident  in  the 
lands  bordering  on  the  British  sphere,  to  be  aware  that 
just  then  the  British  hinterland  was  a  prey  to  German 

1  "  You  conquered  him  with  words,  Great  Master,  you  defeated 
him,  that  German.  But  when  you  left  he  said  to  his  people:  'I 
don't  hate  him,  that  Englishman.  He  is  a  man.'  " 


338      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

and  British,  Austrian,  American,  South  African  and 
even  Goanese-Indian  buccaneers,  who  obeyed  no  laws 
or  injunctions  of  the  feeble  Chartered  Company  or  of 
the  weak  young  Protectorate  Government  which  fol- 
lowed. 

Some  of  these  outlaws  had  come  to  East  Africa  with 
a  voluble  Austrian  crank  and  two  Russian  anarchists 
who  tried  to  found  an  impossible  Utopia  in  South 
Galaland,  the  Colony  of  Freiheit  —  the  main  principle 
of  which  was  that  the  oppressed  white  people  of  Cen- 
tral and  Eastern  Europe  were  to  be  free  to  do  as  they 
liked  here  and  take  all  they  wanted,  while  the  natives 
of  East  Africa  were  to  be  their  serfs.  The  natives  of 
that  part  of  East  Africa  —  the  proud  Galas  —  who  did 
not  even  know  a  good  white  man  when  they  saw  him, 
or  allow  him  to  live  —  soon  settled  the  hash  of  the 
Freiheiters,  many  of  whom  (there  were  three  hundred 
in  all)  died  of  malarial  fever.  The  remnant  that  es- 
caped across  the  Tana  became  a  scourge  of  inner  East 
Africa;  and  a  faint  flavour  of  their  unscrnpulousness 
still  remains.  At  the  time  of  Roger's  musing  ride  back 
from  Stolzenberg's  red  Crater-fortress  to  his  home  at 
Magara  on  the  Iraku  escarpment  there  were  about  a 
dozen  of  these  pioneers  of  civilization  still  remaining 
in  activity.  A  few  had  made  moderate  competencies 
and  had  returned  to  Central  Europe  to  abandon  Com- 
munism in  favour  of  State  and  Church,  and  to  make 
respectable  marriages  with  high-born  damsels.  The 
greater  devils,  the  altogether  branded- with-the-brand- 
of-Cain  that  remained  would  one  by  one  either  enter 
some  company's  service,  not  too  scrupulous  as  to  ante- 
cedents, or  die  bloody  and  terrible  deaths.  Meantime, 
they  shot  enormous  numbers  of  elephants,  made  them- 
selves chiefs  of  nomad  tribes,  started  harems  of  twenty 
or  thirty  bought  or  snatched  damsels  (who  thought  the 
whole  episode  rather  a  lark),  accumulated  great  herds 
of  cattle,  sheep,  goats  and  Masai  donkeys.  Later,  as 


TROUBLE  WITH  'STOLZENBERG         339 

things  became  more  defined,  frontiers  more  precise, 
laws  more  clearly  formulated  and  regulations  —  my 
own  for  example  —  more  vexatious,  they  turned  them- 
selves into  smugglers  and  professional  lawbreakers. 
They  conveyed  out  of  British  into  German  territory 
forbidden  ivory  of  female  elephants;  they  brought 
from  the  German  sphere  cattle  that  might  be  affected 
with  some  germ  disease  and  were  therefore  forbidden 
to  enter  British  territory;  they  disposed  of  rhinoceros 
horns  that  were  in  excess  of  the  miserly  allowance 
granted  to  big-game  slaughterers;  they  carried  on  a 
brisk  slave  trade  by  enrolling  hundreds  of  labourers 
in  German  East  Africa  and  conveying  them  hundreds 
of  miles  into  British  East  Africa  and  disposing  of 
them  at  a  premium  to  the  many  associations  and  enter- 
prises requiring  the  black  man's  strong  arm  and  patient 
labour;  and  they  redressed  the  balance  by  raiding  un- 
noticed districts  under  the  British  flag  and  transport- 
ing the  inhabitants  to  German  East  Africa  to  be  en- 
rolled as  labourers  under  military  discipline. 

A  few  of  them  were  unmitigated  scoundrels,  two  or 
three  had  a  maniac's  blood-lust  for  killing  beautiful 
creatures  of  little  use  when  killed;  or  delighted  in  in- 
flicting cruelties  on  the  natives  "  to  show  their  power." 
Many  a  blameless  Government  or  Company's  official 
proceeding  up-country  has  been  surprised  at  the  hatred 
which  flamed  out  at  his  approach,  he  guiltless  of  any 
unkindness  or  injustice.  One  or  other  of  these  master- 
less  men  were  the  cause  of  the  treacherous  attack  on 
his  caravan,  or  the  loss  of  his  life  in  an  ambush  which 
had  to  be  expensively  avenged  by  a  military  expedition. 

Yet  if  there  was  the  left  wing  of  this  Legion  of  the 
Damned  which  drew  up  at  the  foot  of  the  gallows,  there 
was  the  right  wing,  headed  by  Sir  Willowby  Patterne, 
which  remained  in  touch  with  good  society  and  even 
dined,  coming  and  going,  at  the  Administrator's  table 
or  with  Sir  Bennet  Molyneux  at  home.  Nothing  to 


340      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

their  actual  discredit  was  proved  against  them.  And 
East  Africa  was  five  thousand  miles  from  May  fair. 

Patterne,  whose  first  shooting  expedition  of  1890-91 
had  resulted  in  quite  a  nice  little  profit  from  the  ivory 
it  obtained,  took  up  definitely  an  East  African  career. 
He  had  at  first  tried  to  get  himself  commissioned  for 
the  interior  of  the  Chartered  Company's  territory. 
But  its  directors  were  well-intentioned,  shrewd  men 
and  his  home  reputation  barred  the  way.  Yet  he  could 
not  very  well  —  being  a  Baronet  of  far-reaching  con- 
nexions —  be  denied  access  to  this  loosely  governed 
region,  whither  he  came  every  two  or  three  years. 
After  his  first  journey  and  the  court  cases  it  aroused  at 
Unguja,  he  was  not  such  a  fool  as  to  continue  his  sav- 
age treatment  of  his  carriers  and  servants  or  he  would 
soon  have  been  unable  to  recruit  a  caravan.  On  the 
contrary  he  paid  well  and  gave  a  liberal  food  allow- 
ance, and  within  limits  his  enforcement  of  a  rather 
Prussian  discipline  exacted  the  respect  of  the  Negro, 
who  appreciates  arbitrary  power  if  it  is  not  accom- 
panied by  meanness  in  money  matters.  His  reckless 
slaughter  of  game  made  him  even  popular  with  his 
expeditions  because  it  gave  the  men  a  surfeit  of  meat, 
and  trophies  to  turn  into  amulets. 

Patterne  at  last  became  tolerated  as  an  inevitable 
concomitant  of  the  march  of  civilization,  and  acquired 
citizenship  in  British  East  Africa  by  staking  out  a 
vague  "  concession  "  near  the  north-west  corner  of  the 
Kilimanjaro  slopes  on  the  edge  of  the  German  fron- 
tier. It  was  in  this  way  and  in  this  neighbourhood  that 
he  got  to  know  Adolf  Stolzenberg,  whom  he  helped  in 
his  raids  against  the  Masai;  less  by  direct  participa- 
tion than  by  furnishing  him  with  arms  and  ammuni- 
tion and  by  disposing  of  his  captured  cattle. 

"  What  do  you  know  about  this  curious  personage, 
Stolzenberg?"  asked  Roger  of  his  two  friends,  Hilde- 


TROUBLE  WITH  STOLZENBERG         341 

brandt  and  Wiese,  when  he  had  returned  to  Magara 
from  his  visit  to  the  Red  Crater. 

"  Only  what  we  hear  people  say,"  replied  Hilde- 
brandt.  "  Some  say  he  is  just  a  Sous  African  German 
who  do  some  bad  sing  in  Sous  Africa  and  com  up  here 
ten,  twelf  year  ago  to  join  the  Denhardts.  Ozzers 
say  he  com  from  Germany  long  before,  wiz  Dr. 
Fischer,  and  zat  he  was  natural  son  of  our  old  Emperor 
Wilhelm  One.  First,  Emperor  put  him  in  army,  and 
several  times  pay  his  debts,  and  zen  when  he  kill 
anozzer  officer  in  duel  he  pack  him  off  to  Africa  and 
say,  '  Never  let  me  see  your  face  again.'  But  p'raps 
zat  is  only  story  invented  by  ze  man  himself.  Som- 
times  I  sink  our  Government  use  him  in  som  way.  I 
dare  say  your  Government  do  ze  same  by  zis  ozzer  man 
you  hate  so,  Vill-o-bee  Patterne.  What  a  f onny  name ! 
Your  English  names  are  somtimes  more  forniy  zan 
ours!" 

The  German  Commandant,  consulted  by  Roger  ( who 
in  April,  1897,  was  on  his  way  to  the  coast  after  having 
made  everything  safe  behind  him),  was  rather  non- 
committal about  Stolzenberg.  The  conversation  was 
in  German,  punctuated  with  phrases  of  Swahili,  on  the 
part  of  the  Commandant,  who  was  proud  of  having 
acquired  a  smattering  of  this  African  tongue.  He  was 
rather  non-committal  about  the  denizen  of  the  Red 
Crater.  He  was  a  "  derben  Kerl "  .  .  .  "  Simba, 
yule,  kabisa,"  the  terror  of  the  Masai.  He  kept  the 
Masai  occupied  in  that  quarter  while  the  Germans 
tackled  the  Wa-hehe  on  the  south.  He  must  be  given 
some  latitude  .  .  .  the  Commandant  would  see  he  did 
not  impinge  on  the  Concession  .  .  .  perhaps  he  might 
be  persuaded  to  take  command  of  a  large  irregular 
force  against  the  Wa-hehe.  .  .  . 

" '  Divide  et  impera,'  sehen  Sie  ?     Ein  glas  Rhein- 


342      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

wein,  nicht  so?     Und  Soda?     Ein  lang-trinken  in  der 
Englische  phrase.  ..." 

It  seemed  incongruous  that  this  scene  —  the  rather 
stiff  German  major,  in  strict,  white,  military  uniform 
and  an  encumbering  sword,  a  black  sentry,  not  far 
away,  walking  with  a  plap,  plap,  plap  of  his  bare  feet 
up  and  down  the  prescribed  number  of  paces;  a  plainly 
furnished,  white-washed  room  in  a  square  fort  with 
pretentious  crenellations  along  its  high  white  walls ;  the 
oleograph  portrait  of  Kaiser  Wilhelm  II;  the  camp 
table,  the  Rhine  \vine  in  long-necked  bottles,  the  enam- 
elled iron  tumblers  and  the  soda  siphons ;  and  the  click 
of  a  typewriter  in  the  next  apartment  —  should  come 
up  before  his  mental  vision  as  he  sat  with  Lucy  and 
Maud  and  the  Schrader  partners  on  a  balcony  in  the 
Strand,  waiting  for  Queen  Victoria  to  pass  to  her  Jubi- 
lee thanksgiving  at  St.  Paul's!  Why  should  he  think 
of  Adolf  Stolzenberg  then? 

He  was  but  part  of  the  African  nightmare  which  he 
would  fain  roll  up  and  forget.  A  few  weeks  of  Eng- 
land had  put  Africa's  nose  out  of  joint.  To  work  for 
the  redemption  of  a  tiny  portion  of  German  Africa 
when  such  gigantic  developments  of  British  Africa 
were  dawning  in  the  imagination  of  far-seeing  men,  or 
when  an  evolution  still  more  important  was  taking 
place  in  his  own  land,  in  the  Far  East,  in  America.  .  .  . 

What  was  it  that  brought  back  the  Red  Crater  to  his 
mind,  the  sinister  face  and  powerful  figure  of  Stolzen- 
berg; or  the  German  Commandant  in  the  fort  at  Kon- 
doa?  Whose  was  the  thin,  aquiline,  insolent  face  with 
its  riotus  smile  that  held  his  gaze  across  the  narrow 
Strand,  the  face  of  a  tall  man  in  ultra-fashionable  cut 
of  clothes,  standing  up  amid  a  bower  of  Gaiety  girls 
with  four  or  five  extra-smart  young  City  men  —  stock- 
brokers, no  doubt,  Company  promoters,  or  the  solicitors 
of  Company  promoters  —  ?  It  was  Willowby  Patterne 


TROUBLE  WITH  STOLZENBERG         343 

he  had  been  staring  at  for  several  minutes;  and  Sir 
Willowby  was  flicking  a  greeting  to  him  with  the  mani- 
cured hand  which  had  drawn  the  trigger  on  so  many 
lovely  beasts,  or  had  li  f ted  the  Kiboko  with  such  a  cun- 
ning twist  to  lay  its  lash  on  the  naked  skin  of  some  de- 
faulting native  porter.  .  .  . 

He  had  to  concentrate  his  thoughts  before  he  replied 
to  the  greeting  with  a  grave  bow  —  had  to  remember 
that  he  had  once  played  semi-host  to  this  man  at  a 
Scotch  shooting  lodge;  hated  him  mostly  on  hearsay 
unproved  evidence,  and  chiefly  on  apprehension  as  to 
future  maleficence,  rather  than  on  positive  wrongs  to 
himself. 

Then  he  gave  his  consideration  once  more  to  the 
passing  pageant. 

Thrum  .  .  .  thrum  .  .  .  thrum  .  .  .  thrum  ...  in 
between  the  bursts  of  military  music  went  the  steady 
marching  of  the  Imperial  troops.  There  was  the  pick 
of  the  regiments  of  the  British  line ;  there  were  samples 
of  Indian  infantry  —  bearded  Sikhs,  grinning  Gurkhas, 
handsome  Panjabis  —  Surely  that  was  young  Pearsall- 
Smith  at  the  head  of  one  of  these  detachments?  He 
had  heard  of  his  distinguishing  himself  in  the  Nyasa- 
land  wars  against  the  Arabs  —  and  he  winced  to  think 
he  had  no  part  in  this  ceremonial,  he  could  point  of 
late  to  no  service  to  the  Crown  and  Empire  —  was  it 
his  fault?  If  he  had  gone  to  Norway  or  to  South 
America,  could  he  have  achieved  anything  that  might 
have  brought  him  into  the  procession  of  to-day? 
What  splendid  Indian  cavalry.  That  Indian  prince 
leading  them  had  once  given  him  some  tiger  shooting 
when  he  was  a  young  A.D.C.  to  Sir  Griffith  Gaunt. 
Ah!  Here  was  Africa  in  the  procession  —  Hausas 
from  Nigeria,  Sudanese  from  Egypt;  these  bronzed, 
well-seated,  rather  insolent-looking  white  men  were 
mounted  police  from  the  Cape,  from  Bechuanaland, 
from  Natal. 


344      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

These  gaudy  zouave  uniforms  and  Christy  minstrels' 
faces  were  a  contingent  from  the  West  Indian  regi- 
ments that  had  figured  in  so  many  West  African  wars. 
And  now  came  well-set-up  Turkish  police  from  Cyprus, 
well-drilled  Chinese  police  from  Hong  Kong;  even 
solemn-looking  Dyaks  from  Borneo,  who  were  believed 
to  have  given  up  head-hunting  in  favour  of  constabu- 
lary work  at  the  Bornean  ports. 

And  carriages  containing  permanent  officials  —  he 
thought  he  recognized  Sir  Bennet  Molyneux  in  one, 
possibly  attached  to  the  person  of  some  foreign  prince, 
some  German  or  Russian  Grand  Duke.  And  Ministers 
of  State  saluted  by  the  happy  crowd  with  good-hu- 
moured cheers  and  a  few  serio-comic  groans.  That 
one  who  aroused  such  an  outburst  of  cheering  was  the 
great  Choselwhit,  Josiah  Choselwhit,  Secretary  of  State 
for  the  Colonies,  in  Windsor  uniform  with  the  custo- 
mary eyeglass.  His  hosts,  the  Schraders,  joined  lustily 
in  the  hurrahs,  as  did  the  City  men  opposite;  Chosel- 
whit was  supposed  to  have  brought  grist  to  the  City 
mills  and  to  be  the  mainstay  of  the  British  Empire  in 
which  Germans  as  well  as  British  made  such  millions 
of  money.  .  .  . 

And  .  .  .  and  .  .  .  and  ...  At  last,  after  many 
preliminary  princes  and  princesses,  Queen  Victoria 
herself;  a  little  figure  swathed  in  much  black  clothing 
but  with  filmy  white  around  the  rosy  face  and  yellow- 
white  hair.  .  .  .  She  progressed  very  slowly  —  so  it 
seemed  to  Roger  —  past  their  windows.  The  Schrader 
brothers  positively  brayed  their  international  loyalty, 
so  that  their  voices  were  even  heard  by  her  above  the 
deafening  clamour.  She  turned  her  somewhat  haughty 
profile  and  clear  blue  eyes  towards  their  balcony  with 
its  flamboyant  draperies  and  symbols,  as  if  she  searched 
for  some  face  she  knew  to  whom  she  might  address  a 
smile  of  acknowledgment;  but  finding  none,  turned  her 
gaze  to  the  Gaiety  girls  and  the  shouting  young  men 


TROUBLE  WITH  STOLZENBERG         345 

who  had  invited  Patterne  as  their  guest.  To  these 
pretty  actresses,  showing  real  emotion,  she  did  address 
a  royal  smile,  which  caused  one  of  them  to  give  way 
to  real  tears.  Then  Roger  found  himself  gazing  at 
the  back  of  her  bonnet  with  its  white  ostrich  plume, 
illogically  disappointed  that  there  had  been  no  smile 
for  him,  he  who  would  have  served  her  so  gladly  had 
her  ministers  let  him. 

The  Queen-ant  of  an  unusually  large  ant-hill  on  this 
little  ball  of  rock  and  water  having  gone  on  her  way  to 
thank  the  Master  Spirit  of  the  Universe  for  a  few  ad- 
ditional years  of  li  fe  and  power  to  do  good  —  the  while 
no  doubt  that  Master  Spirit,  despite  Its  Unlimited  In- 
telligence, was  vexed  and  preoccupied  at  the  way  things 
were  going  in  the  constellation  of  Orion  —  a  million 
times  larger  than  the  whole  solar  system;  or  at  the 
accelerated  currents  of  star-dust  in  the  Milky  Way,  or 
the  slow  progress  towards  forming  a  cluster  of  sixty 
giant  worlds  made  by  the  Nebula  of  Andromeda :  the 
Schrader  partners  were  dispensing  very  elegant  hospi- 
tality in  the  room  behind  the  two  windows  they  had 
taken  at  an  Illustrated  Newspaper  Office  in  the  Strand. 
They  were  essentially  practical  men,  being  German, 
with  a  Jewish  quarter-strain  and  a  French  education. 
They  could  have  entertained  Roger  and  his  wife  and 
sister ;  a  great  Singer  —  who  could  not  "  place  " 
Roger  and  therefore  was  cold  to  him ;  a  great  Actress 
rather  past  her  prime ;  a  great  Essayist  whose  mental 
scope  was  limited  by  Oxford  and  the  Athenreum:  and 
various  other  guests  of  intellectuality  and  distinction: 
they  could  have  entertained  their  friends  and  acquaint- 
ance in  the  Piccadilly  house  of  one  of  them  and  the 
Grosvenor  Gardens  house  of  another;  or  they  could 
have  thrown  open  their  splendid  City  offices  for  the 
same  purpose;  but  the  view  of  the  whole  procession 
and  especially  of  the  Queen  would  not  have  been  so 


346      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

near,  so  concentrated,  as  from  windows  on  the  first 
floor  of  the  Strand  at  its  narrowest.  So  in  fixing  up 
their  plans  two  months  beforehand  it  was  here  they 
were  playing  the  lavish  host. 

The  collation  was  of  the  most  exquisite;  the  wines 
of  the  finest  quality  imparting  the  most  insidious  in- 
toxication, so  that  you  thought  you  were  only  being 
your  natural  self,  though  you  put  your  elbows  on  the 
table  and  wondered  that  you  had  never  hitherto  been 
ranked  as  a  great  wit.  The  celebrated  singer  began 
to  forget  her  secret  grievance  that  she  was  not  being 
entertained  by  Royalty  and  had  not  ridden  in  one  of 
those  carriages.  She  consoled  herself  by  the  assurance 
she  would  be  at  the  Naval  Review  and  the  Garden 
Party  and  probably  most  of  her  fellow-guests  would 
not.  And  then  after  all,  if  you  did  stoop  to  City  en- 
tertainers, you  could  not  do  much  better  than  the 
Schriiders,  unless  it  were  the  Rothschilds.  Baron 
Schrader  was  the  head  of  the  family,  and  he  had  been 
made  a  Baron  by  Napoleon  III,  which  was  much  more 
chic  than  a  German  title  given  by  a  petty  German 
court.  The  Schraders  for  several  generations  had 
been  dilettanti,  outside  business;  musicians  of  a  cer- 
tain talent ;  shrewd  judges  of  cinque-cento  art;  abstruse 
ornithologists;  members  of  the  Zoological  Society's 
Council;  of  a  Jockey  Club  here  and  of  a  Cercle 
d'Escrime  there.  But  to  sustain  this  life  of  many 
facets  they  required  unlimited  money;  and  Roger 
Brentham  just  now  was  promising  to  become  one  of 
their  most  remarkable  money-spinners.  Mr.  Eugene 
Schrader  was  therefore,  after  one  or  two  elegant  fill- 
ings and  sippings  over  Royal  names,  proposing  ever  so 
informally  his  good  health,  and  that  of  his  charming 
and  devoted  wife,  and  .  .  .  and  ...  he  stammered 
a  little  over  the  characterization  of  Maud,  who  was 
the  least  genial  member  of  the  party  and  had  shown 
herself  a  little  blunt  with  the  actress  past  her  prime, 


TROUBLE  WITH  STOLZENBERG         347 

who  was  now  descending  to  whispered  confidences  of 
marital  ill-treatment.  "  But  our  friend,  Captain 
Brentham  .  .  .  may  I  without  indiscretion  say  he 
should,  if  he  had  all  that  was  due  to  him,  have  been  in 
the  procession  to-day  as  an  actor  rather  than  a  spec- 
tator? Though  our  party  would  have  lost  one  of  its 
most  interesting  guests.  ..."  (The  Essayist,  whose 
nose  has  gone  very  red  with  the  champagne  and  the 
Chateau  Yquem,  here  looks  at  Roger  for  the  first  time 
with  focussed  eyes:  is  it  possible  that  he  could  have 
done  anything  worth  notice,  outside  Oxford  and  the 
Athemeum?)  "Our  friend,  Captain  Brentham,  first 
led  the  way  of  Imperial  expansion  in  East  Africa;  he  is 
now  endeavouring  to  show  us  Germans  how  the  wealth 
of  our  East  African  possessions  should  be  developed 
and  brought  into  the  world's  markets.  Germany  was 
not  too  proud  to  enlist  the  services  of  any  man  —  or 
woman"  (he  bowed  to  the  Actress  and  Singer)  "of 
ability.  To  be  a  German  was  in  some  ways  to  be  a 
world-citizen.  If  they  searched  the  glorious  records 
of  the  British  Empire  they  would  find  them  studded 
with  German  names.  .  .  /The  British  Empire  of  to- 
day stood  grandly  open  to  German  enterprise;  they 
would  find  in  return  that  the  German  Empire  overseas 
was  ready  to  afford  every  opportunity  to  British  col- 
onizing and  administrative  genius.  So  there  would 
be  in  German  circles  no  grudging  to  Captain  Brentham 
of  a  full  meed  of  praise —  from  his  firm,  at  any  rate  — 
for  the  truly  remarkable  discoveries  he  had  made.  .  .  ." 

"  You  mustn't  forget  the  credit  due  to  Hildebrandt 
and  Wiese  and  several  other  fellows."  interpolated 
Brentham,  desirous  of  doing  the  right  thing - 

"  Just  so  —  of  your  German  colleagues :  that  is  as  it 
should  be.  But  that  brings  me  to  the  climax  I  was 
leading  up  to,  rather  wordily  I  fear.  Dear  friends  " 
(his  voice  a  little  tremulous  with  honest  emotion)  "  let 
us  drink  a  final  toast:  To  Anglo-German  Co-opera- 


348      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

tion;  to  the  great  Alliance  of  our  two  Nations,  founded 
on  affinity  of  race  and  language,  a  common  love  of 
Truth,  a  common  devotion  to  Science,  and  I  might  add 
almost  —  a  common  dynasty"  .  .  .  (rest  lost  in  clap- 


The  toast,  however,  was  drunk  somewhat  sparingly 
and  absent-mindedly.  The  Singer,  Madame  Violante 
(her  married  name  was  Violet  Mackintosh),  felt  dan- 
gerously near  hiccups  (it  was  the  plovers'  eggs,  she 
told  herself)  and  she  might  have  to  sing  to-night! 
How  could  she  have  been  so  mad?  The  Actress  felt 
she  had  said  rather  too  much  about  her  husband  to  a 
total  stranger,  a  middle-aged  woman  who  now  looked 
a  mere  parson's  wife. 

The  Essayist  had  grown  rather  sulky  because  his 
hosts  in  this  wholly  unnecessary  speechifying  had  made 
no  reference  to  his  own  contribution  to  Anglo-German 
friendship,  his  Place  of  Heine  among  Modern  Poets 
and  his  Synthesis  of  Lessing's  Dramas. 

Then  the  party  broke  up,  and  the  kindly  Schraders 
suggested,  as  any  form  of  conveyance  was  totally  un- 
procurable, they  should  have  the  hardihood  (the  gen- 
tlemen protecting  the  ladies)  to  walk  back  through  the 
common  People  —  whom  the  Police  had  described  as 
uncommon  good-natured  and  just  a  bit  merry  —  to  the 
Green  Park  and  witness  the  dear  Queen's  return  to 
Buckingham  Palace. 

But  when  the  Jubilee  fiss-f  ass-  fuss  had  abated  and 
before  they  went  to  Homburg  and  Aix,  the  partners 
sent  for  Roger  and  spoke  to  him  with  business-like 
generosity.  He  and  his  staff  had  made  discoveries  of 
value  that  might  be  almost  called  astounding.  The 
capital  of  the  Company  would  possibly  be  increased 
ten-  fold  —  large  subscriptions  in  Germany  —  exciting 
immense  interest  among  the  best  people  on  this  side. 


TROUBLE  WITH  STOLZENBERG         349 

His  original  syndicate  shares  had  become  equivalent  to 
50,000  shares  in  the  enlarged  Company,  and  as  they 
stood  at  a  pound,  why  he  would  be  worth,  if  he  realized, 
£50,000.  But,  of  course,  he  would  not  do  such  a  thing 
till  promises  had  been  turned  into  performances  — 
Meantime,  they  were  prepared  to  raise  his  salary  to 
£3,000  a  year  —  he  would  probably  have  to  entertain 
German  officials  considerably  —  and  conclude  an 
agreement  for  ten  years.  ..."  But  if  I  have  to  en- 
tertain largely?  "  he  queried,  not  above  making  as  good 
a  bargain  as  possible.  ..."  My  dear  Captain  Bren- 
tham!  Don't  let  that  stand  between  us.  ...  There 
shall  be  an  entertainment  allowance  of  five  hundred  a 
year.  And  we  hope  that  that  will  induce  you  to  take 
your  charming  lady  back  with  you,  and  your  sister, 
Miss  Brentham.  I  assure  you  the  encomiums  passed 
on  those  ladies  by  our  German  friends  out  there  have 
contributed  not  a  little  to.  .  .  ." 

"  All  this  is  very  kind  of  you.  But  I  don't  want  to 
think  I  alone  am  being  rewarded  for  discoveries  which 
in  some  cases  were  entirely  due  to.  .  .  ." 

"  You  will  find  when  you  go  back  your  German 
colleagues  have  not  been  forgotten  in  the  all-round  in- 
crease of  salaries.  .  .  .  And  now;  go  and  take  a  good 
holiday  and  get  well  braced  up  before  your  return  in 
the  autumn.  .  .  ." 

Roger  took  them  at  their  word.  He  and  Lucy, 
after  revelling  in  the  joys  of  parenthood  in  Berkshire, 
went  off  to  spend  a  month  with  Sibyl  at  Glen  Sporran. 
Lucy  had  long  since  grown  used  to  Sibyl,  so  the  pros- 
pect of  the  visit  caused  her  no  perturbation.  She  fol- 
lowed Maud's  advice  as  to  suitability  of  outfit  and  the 
number  of  evening  frocks  and  tea-gowns.  She  was 
the  only  member  of  the  party  who  did  not  bicycle  or 
play  bridge.  Sibyl  boasted  of  doing  sixty  miles  a  day 


350      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

without  turning  a  hair;  but  the  Rev.  Stacy  Bream 
nearly  killed  himself  trying  to  emulate  her  feats  of 
coasting  downhill  and  pedalling  uphill. 

The  Honble.  Vicky  Masham  was  there  as  of  yore  — 
a  little  longer  in  the  tooth  (she  had  got  used  to  Sibyl's 
nickname  by  this  time,  and  had  forgiven  it  as  Sibyl 
had  helped  her  to  pay  her  bridge  debts)  — .  She  hurt 
her  ankle  badly  in  a  bicycle  accident  and  had  to  lie  up. 
Lucy,  the  only  one  at  home,  sat  with  her,  did  fancy 
work  and  burbled  gently  about  her  African  experiences. 
The  Honble.  Victoria  grew  quite  interested,  regretted 
that  Mrs.  Brentham,  born  as  she  had  been  born,  with- 
out the  purple,  and  her  husband  not  having  pursued  a 
British  career,  could  not  be  brought  to  the  dear  Queen's 
notice.  .  .  .  The  Queen  took  the  greatest  interest  in 
Africa.  .  .  . 

Lucy,  of  course,  after  a  few  lessons  abandoned  any 
attempt  to  play  bridge  (people  in  1897  debated 
whether  bicycling,  bridge,  the  Bible,  or  herbaceous 
borders  had  brought  the  greatest  happiness  to  Britain : 
we,  in  after  life,  see  it  was  the  bicycle).  She  was 
scared  by  the  subterranean  forces  it  aroused  and  lit  up 
in  the  angry  eyes  around  her,  the  fortunes  that  were 
involved  in  the  plunge  of  No  Trumps,  the  awful  penal- 
ties attendant  on  a  revoke,  the  fate  that  hung  on  a 
finesse.  So  she  wisely  declined  to  play  and  talked  — 
or  rather  listened  —  to  the  one  who  cut  out;  or  if  sev- 
eral tables  were  made  up,  she  dispensed  drinks  and 
sweets  and  a  sandwich  supper.  The  Rev.  Stacy 
Bream,  vaguely  nettled  by  her  rival  Christianity, 
glanced  at  her  once,  remembered  years  ago  she  had 
been  Sibyl's  butt,  and  inquired  of  Sibyl  "  who  her  peo- 
ple were,  what  her  father  was  ?  " 

"  One  of  the  best  farmers  in  Berkshire,"  said  Sibyl. 
"  Mine  is  —  or  was  —  for  I  had  to  buy  him  up  —  one 
of  the  worst.  .  .  .  What  was  your  father,  by  the  bye? 
It  never  occurred  to  me  to  ask  you  before.  .  .  ." 


TROUBLE  WITH  STOLZENBERG         351 

The  Rev.  Stacy's  father  had  really  been  a  very  push- 
ing Agent  for  a  firm  of  Decorators  and  Wall-paper 
designers :  so  he  replied  with  a  sigh :  "  A  great,  great 
traveller,  dear  lady ;  a  man  who  loved  Colour  and  De- 
sign better  than  his  immortal  soul,  I  fear.  .  .  .  It's  to 
you  to  cut.  .  .  ." 

But   Sibyl  had  not  confined  her  Highland  house- 
party  to  these  worn-out  fribbles.     Bream  had  his  uses. 
He  would  be  there  to  assoil  a  guest  who  might  get  shot 
in  the  shooting,  and  so  perhaps  save  the  unpleasant- 
ness of  an  inquest;  and  his  stories  of  people  on  the 
fringe  of  Society  were  the  equivalent  and  the  accom- 
paniment  in   midnight   chat  —  just   before   you   took 
your  bedroom  candle  —  of  pate-de-foie  sandwiches  and 
cherry  brandy.     Vicky  Masham  kept  you  right  with 
Queen  Victoria;  Lucy  was  a  reminder  to  her  not  to 
make  a  fool  of  herself  with  Roger  .  .  .  perhaps  also 
there  was  a  little  gratitude  in  her  hard  nature  for  the 
good  a  year  of  Lucy's  society  had  wrought  in  her  little 
son's  health  and  disposition.     But  she  wanted  —  more 
than  ever  at  thirty-six  —  to  be  a  political  woman,  to 
make  a  difference  in  the  world,  hand  her  name  down 
in  history,  change  or  shape  history  in  fact.     It  had 
occurred  to  her,  as  it  did  to  fifty  other  mature,  hand- 
some, well-placed  women  of  ambition,  to  marry  Cecil 
Rhodes;  but  the  Jacobzoon  Raid  and  still  more  the 
eager  rivalry  of  other  ladies,  perfectly  shameless   in 
their  frontal  attacks  on  the  Colossus,  soon  thwarted 
any  such  idea  .  .  .  reduced  it  indeed,  to  such  a  ridicu- 
lous  impossibility   that   it  was   only   confided   to   her 
locked    diary.     She    had    fortunately    withdrawn   her 
half-promise  from  Sir  Elijah  Tooley  at  the  very  first 
hint  that  there  was  a  crack  in  his  reservoir  of  wealth. 
Otherwise  —  with  a  couple  of  millions  of  his  money 
.  .  .  and  he  could  have  had  his  own  suite  of  apart- 
ments, and  she  would  have  stopped  him  waxing  his 
moustaches  .  .  .  she     might     have    over-turned    her 


352      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

world.  .  .  .  Then  there  was  Count  Balanoff,  the  Rus- 
sian Ambassador,  a  widower.  .  .  . 

"  You  know,"  she  said  to  Roger  in  one  of  her  many 
smoking-room  tete-a-tete  confidences  — "  he  is  '  richis- 
sime,'  and  really  rather  decent,  though  he  does  dye  his 
hair.  .  .  .  Gold  mines  in  Siberia,  turquoise  mines  in 
the  Caucasus.  .  .  .  He  seemed  quite  to  want  to  marry 
me,  at  one  time.  .  .  .  Vicky  Masham  thinks  it  was  the 
Queen  who  interposed.  If  he'd  asked  me  and  I'd  ac- 
cepted I  should  have  made  myself  in  no  time  the  most 
talked-about  woman  in  Europe.  I'd  have  negotiated 
an  alliance  with  Russia  —  always  an  idea  of  mine  — 
and  have  paid  the  Kaiser  out  for  his  Kruger  telegram 
-i—  Why  is  it,  Roger,  there  isn't  a  rush  to  marry  me? 
I've  ten  thousand  a  year  for  life;  I'm  only  thirty-six, 
which  nowadays  is  equivalent  to  twenty-six;  I've  a 
splendid  constitution,  my  hair's  my  own  and  so  are  my 
teeth,  my  figure  is  perfect.  ...  I  might  be  an  artist's 
model  for  the  'tout  ensemble.'  .  .  .  And  yet  ...  (a 
pause  for  smoking). 

"  And  it  isn't  as  though  the  re-marriage  of  titled 
women  was  '  mal  vu '  at  Court  any  longer.  .  .  . 
There's  Lady  Landolphia  Birchall.  She's  going  to  be 
married  again  in  the  autumn ;  this  time  to  a  '  booky  ' 
-  for  he  really  is  nothing  more,  though  he  takes  bets 
with  the  Prince.  And  she's  turned  fifty.  But  the 
Queen  doesn't  seem  to  mind.  ..." 

But  to  return  to  the  theme  from  which  this  digres- 
sion started.  Sibyl  had  asked  four  great  Imperialists 
down  to  Glen  Sporran  to  make  Roger's  acquaintance: 
the  Honble.  Darcy  Freebooter,  Percy  Bracket  —  Ed- 
itor of  the  Sentinel  —  the  Right  Honble.  J.  Applebody 
Bland,  and  Albert  Greystock,  grandson  of  old  Lord 
Bewdly.  She  would  have  liked  to  have  captured  Mr. 
Rudyard  Kipling,  but  he  had  perversely  gone  to  the 
United  States,  a  region  which  lay  outside  Sibyl's  calcu- 


TROUBLE  WITH  STOLZENBERG         353 

lations,  since  we  could  neither  annex  it  nor  protect  it. 
She  had  even  tried  to  include  the  great  Choselwhit  in 
the  company,  the  mysterious  idol  before  whom  and 
whose  non-committal  eyeglass  so  much  imperialistic 
incense  was  then  burnt.  But  he  had  answered  coldly, 
in  an  undistinguished  handwriting,  that  he  regretted  a 
previous  engagement. 

"  I  don't  mind  admitting,  it's  rather  a  snub,"  she 
said  to  her  quite  indifferent  cousin,  "  and  it  vexes  me 
because  he  is  the  coming  man.  It  is  he  we  must  look 
to,  to  lead  the  Unionist,  the  Imperial  Party;  not  those 
effete  Brinsleys  with  their  antiquated  love  of  Free 
Trade  and  the  Church  of  England.  .  .  .  I'm  very 
much  '  in  '  just  now  with  Laura  Sawbridge  .  .  .  you 
know,  that  clever  woman-writer  and  traveller.  She 
says  she  can  turn  Chocho  round  her  little  finger.  It 
was  he  who  sent  her  out  to  ...  (rest  whispered). 
Well,  you  see  what  that  means?  Chocho  is  lying  low, 
but  he  means  to  get  even  with  old  Kruger  and  paint  the 
Transvaal  red.  .  .  ." 

Whether  anything  much,  except  distrust  and  disgust, 
resulted  from  bringing  Roger  Brentham  within  the 
same  four  walls,  into  the  same  shooting  parties,  bridge 
contests  and  bicycling  excursions  as  these  distinguished 
Imperialists,  it  is  hardly  worth  inquiring.  Imperial- 
ism is  dead,  and  I,  as  an  old  Imperialist,  am  moribund, 
and  most  of  the  people  mentioned  are  no  longer  of  this 
world.  Probably  Roger  thought  Darcy  Freebooter 
what  all  collateral  younger  sons  of  his  stock  had  been 
for  three  centuries :  it  was  described  by  his  surname. 
Percy  Bracket,  he  defined  mentally  as  quite  ignorant 
of  the  Empire  he  unceasingly  boomed  (not  without  a 
practical  purpose,  for  he  expected  most  company  pro- 
moters to  give  him  a  block  of  paid-up  shares  or  "  let 
him  in  on  the  ground  floor'').  The  Rt.  Honble.  Ap- 
plebody  Bland  reminded  Roger  of  Mr.  Quale  in  Bleak 


354      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

House,  whose  mission  it  \Vas  to  be  enthusiastic  about 
everybody  else's  mission  .  .  .  and  recalled  to  Lucy, 
by  the  jets  of  saliva  which  accompanied  his  easily  pro- 
voked eloquence,  her  special  African  horror,  the  Spit- 
ting Cobra.  And  Albert  Greystock  was  too  good  for 
this  world.  He  believed  any  one  who  advocated  en- 
larging the  British  Empire  was  a  pure-souled  mission- 
ary of  civilization,  incapable  of  a  base  greed  for  gain 
or  other  interested  motive.  He  also  believed  that  once 
a  backward  or  savage  country  had  been  painted  red 
on  the  map  there  was  nothing  more  to  be  done  or  said. 
There  it  was:  saved,  happy,  and  gratefully  contented. 

These  people  all  said  in  turn  "  it  was  monstrous  " — 
a  man  who  could  in  six  years  accomplish  such  encour- 
aging results  in  a  part  of  Africa  unfortunately  for  the 
time  being  under  Germany  must  be  brought  back  to 
British  Administration.  Choselwhit  must  be  seen, 
Wiltshire  button-holed,  the  Rothschilds  nudged,  and 
Rhodes  got  round.  .  .  . 

Roger,  however,  was  not  going  to  risk  the  substance 
for  the  shadow  or  be  disloyal  in  the  slightest  degree  to 
the  generous  Schraders.  He  would  buckle-to,  make 
his  pile,  bank  it;  and  then,  perhaps,  weigh  in,  scatter 
the  chaff  and  garner  the  grains  of  Imperialism.  And 
of  one  thing  he  was  jolly  well  sure  —  thinking  back  on 
his  faithful  Somalis,  his  cheery  Wanyamwezi,  on  the 
well-mannered,  manly  Masai,  the  graceful  Iraku,  and 
the  obedient  Wambugwe :  he  would  see  that  the  Black 
men  and  Brown  men  reaped  full  advantage  for  the 
White  man's  intrusion  into  their  domain.  They 
should  receive  compensation  for  disturbance  and  be 
brought  into  partnership,  not  only  of  labour  and  effort, 
but  of  profit. 


CHAPTER  XX 

THE    BOER    WAR 

From  Lady  Silchester  to  her  cousin,  Captain  Roger 
Brentham. 

Stellenbosch, 

Cape  Colony, 
March  25,  1900. 

DEAR  ROGER,— 
Your  letter  from  Magara  of  last  December 
reached  me  in  London  just  as  I  was  leaving  with 
Landolphia  Birchall  (she  kept  her  former  name  when 
she  married  the  Booky  .  .  .  and  quite  right,  too  — 
you  never  know  how  a  second  or  third  marriage  is  go- 
ing to  turn  out,  and  at  any  moment  may  want  your  old 
name  back).  We  came  out  here  to  see  something  of 
the  war  at  close  quarters  and  to  set  up  a  hospital  and  a 
convalescent  home  for  the  sick  and  wounded  officers 
and  men. 

I  cannot  tell  you  how  proud  and  pleased  I  was  you 
had  done  the  right  thing.  People  —  especially  that 
horror,  Willowby  Patterne  .  .  .  my  dear,  he  is  going 
bald  as  an  egg,  with  a  terribly  pink  neck,  all  due  to 
some  mistake  in  a  hair-restorer,  he  says,  but  I  say  it  is 
a  vicious  life  —  people  were  saying  odious  things  about 
you  the  last  year  or  two  for  developing  German  East 
Africa  instead  of  one  of  our  own  colonies.  But  I 
knew  —  and  always  said  —  your  heart  was  in  the  right 
place  and  that  once  you  saw  old  England  was  in  a 
tight  place  you  would  come  to  her  assistance.  There 
is  nothing  like  one's  own  country,  after  all,  is  there?  — 

355 


356      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

"My  country,  right  or  wrong!  " — one  of  the  few  ex- 
cabinet  ministers  who  is  running  straight  said  last  De- 
cember at  a  meeting  I  got  up  at  Reading.  Some  rude 
man  in  the  audience  called  out,  "  But  why  don't  you  set 
it  right?  Then  we  should  know  where  we  are."  But 
you  must  expect  such  retorts  from  people  who  know 
nothing  of  foreign  policy. 

I  wonder  how  you  got  away?  Lucy  and  Maud,  I 
suppose,  you  have  left  behind.  The  Kaiser  seems 
rather  friendly  to  us,  they  all  say,  and  is  going  to  be 
pacified  with  Samoa  and  more  pieces  of  West  Africa. 
So  I  suppose  your  concession  will  be  all  right,  whilst 
you  are  away,  and  the  Germans  won't  do  anything 
unkind  to  poor  Lucy  and  Maud.  Or  have  they  re- 
turned to  England?  It  is  France  who  is  showing  her 
teeth,  not  Germany !  Chocho  has  very  rightly  told  her 
"  to  mend  her  manners."  She  is  a  pig  .  .  .  she  can't 
forgive  our  taking  Egypt  and  turning  back  Marchand 
at  Fashoda. 

Even  Spain  has  seized  the  opportunity  to  get  her 
own  back.  It  seems  Lord  Wiltshire  called  her  a  de- 
caying nation  during  the  war  with  the  United  States, 
and  she  has  been  saying  through  her  press  after  each 
British  defeat :  "  Who's  the  decaying  nation  now? >: 
I  must  say  she  had  some  cause !  Never  were  we  more 
bitterly  disappointed  in  our  Generals  —  before  Lord 
Roberts  came  out.  They  started  off  —  some  of  the 
dear  old  trots,  with  Crimean  whiskers,  if  you'll  be- 
lieve me  —  as  pleased  as  Punch ;  and  their  silly  young 
A.D.C.'s  got  the  porters  at  Waterloo  station  to  stick 
labels  on  their  luggage  "  To  Pretoria,"  "  To  Bloom- 
f ontain  "  (Is  that  how  it's  spelt?).  And,  of  course, 
the  only  result  of  this  boast  fulness  was  that  as  soon  as 
the  old  footlers  got  out  there  they  fell  into  ambushes 
and  lost  their  way  and  their  men,  and  were  deceived 
by  guides,  and  the  soldiers  quite  lost  heart  and  got 
taken  prisoners. 


THE  BOER  WAR  357 

England  in  December!  I  shall  never  forget  it!  I 
couldn't  sleep  for  nights  and  nights,  and  Vicky  Masham 
told  me  the  Queen's  health  received  such  a  shock  that 
she  will  never  be  quite  the  same  again.  .  .  . 

Of  course,  now  we  can  breathe  once  more.  As  you 
are  on  the  spot  and  I  dare  say  in  the  thick  of  it  all,  I 
need  not  tell  you  how  things  have  gone  since  Bobs  and 
K.  of  K.  came  out. 

Well,  of  course,  with  all  this  going  on  in  South 
Africa  you  couldn't  expect  any  loyal  Englishwoman 
who  wasn't  positively  tied  down  by  home  duties  to 
remain  at  home.  So  I  sent  Clithy  to  Eton  —  he's 
nearly  thirteen  now  —  and  kept  on  his  governess  to 
mother  him  when  he  comes  from  school,  and  also  con- 
fided him  to  the  general  care  of  Maurice,  whom  he 
likes.  By  the  bye,  I've  pensioned  off  old  Flower  now, 
or  at  least  got  rid  of  him  with  a  premium,  and  Maurice 
is  full  Agent,  and  I've  advised  Maurice  to  take  on  as  an 
assistant  Marden,  the  County  cricketer,  your  wife's 
brother-in-law!  Well.  Having  done  all  this  and 
girded  up  my  loins,  so  to  speak,  I  made  interest  with 
old  General  de  Gobyns  at  the  War  Office  —  such  an  old 
darling  —  he  served  with  Wellington,  I  believe  —  and 
came  out  here  with  Landolphia  Birchall,  to  supervise 
hospitals  and  give  a  general  eye  to  the  sick  and 
wounded,  read  to  them,  write  letters  home  for  them, 
change  their  bandages,  if  it  isn't  too  complicated  —  and 
so  on.  It  was  partly  the  thought  that  you  were  out 
here  that  decided  me  to  come.  Don't  forget  if  you  are 
wounded  or  ill  to  let  me  know  and  I  will  try  to  come  to 
you  or  get  you  put  into  one  of  my  hospitals.  That 
would  be  jolly! 

Landolphia  is  a  funny  old  party!  She  must  be 
quite  fifty.  She  was  so  ill  crossing  the  Bay  of  Biscay. 
Owing  to  the  disgraceful  amount  of  room  the  staff 
officers  took  up  on  the  steamer  she  and  I  were  jammed 
together  into  one  cabin.  Where  our  maids  were  put, 


358      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

/  don't  know  —  in  the  stoke-hole  I  think.  But  we 
scarcely  saw  them  all  the  voyage  and  when  we  landed 
Sophie  gave  me  notice  at  once,  only  she  can't  get  a 
passage  home  so  she  has  had  to  let  it  stand  over  till  I 
choose  to  return.  Of  course,  under  the  circumstances, 
Landolphia  could  keep  nothing  back  from  me  —  she 
was  so  sea-sick;  as  she  said,  that  she  felt  herself  naked, 
face  to  face  with  her  Maker.  So  everything  had  to  be 
explained  —  her  secrets  of  make-up,  her  sachets  of 
peau  d'espagne,  her  dress  improvers  and  peculiar  stays 
and  adjusted  shoes.  I  suppose  (though  I  laughed 
inwardly  till  I  ached,  she  looked  so  droll  when  she  was 
taken  to  pieces)  I  must  have  been  good  to  her  in  her 
dire  affliction,  for  she's  clung  to  me  ever  since,  and  says 
we  are  sisters  without  a  secret  between  us.  After  all, 
with  all  these  infirmities  and  "  adjustments  "  she  was 
a  plucky  old  thing  ever  to  come  out.  Now  she  thinks 
it  an  awful  lark  — 

By  the  bye,  she  protests  with  tears  in  her  eyes  that 
her  third  husband  is  not  a  booky,  he's  a  trainer,  which, 
it  appears,  is  a  vastly  superior  calling.  She  also  says 
she  oughtn't  to  be  judged  so  harshly  over  her  mar- 
riages. The  second  husband,  Captain  Birchall,  only 
lived  with  her  for  three  months  and  then  broke  his  neck 
in  a  point-to-point  steeplechase.  She  lived  twenty 
years  with  Augustus  Gellibrand,  and  she  really  only 
married  her  present  old  man  —  Dawkins  —  because 
she  got  into  such  a  tangle  over  her  racing  debts  and  he 
put  them  straight.  .  .  . 

***** 

Do  let  me  know  if  and  when  this  gigantic  letter 
reaches  you! 

Your  devoted 

SIBYL. 

As  will  be  seen  later,  this  frank  outpouring  did  not 
come  into  Roger's  hands  for  five  or  six  months.  For- 


THE  BOER  WAR  359 

tunately  Sibyl  had  also  sent  him  several  picture  post- 
cards with  photos  of  herself  and  Lady  Landolphia 
dressed  in  nurses'  costume,  or  a  kind  of  hybrid  costume 
between  a  nurse  and  a  nun.  These  reached  him  at  his 
Agents'  in  Durban.  So  he  wrote  to  her  from  that 
place  and  was  rather  pleased  to  think  she  was  in  the 
same  sub-continent  as  himself.  It  diminished  slightly 
the  acute  form  of  home-sickness  from  which  he  suf- 
fered after  first  landing  in  Natal. 

Once  more  he  asked  himself  if  he  had  done  the  right 
thing  in  volunteering  for  the  South  African  War. 
His  Agents  at  Durban,  being  German  and  Dutch,  were 
at  most  coldly  polite  and  there  seemed  to  be  no  rush  on 
the  part  of  the  authorities  to  enlist  his  services.  In 
order  to  have  two  trusty  servants  who  would  take  care 
of  his  baggage  and  perhaps  follow  him  in  campaign- 
ing —  they  would  make  most  admirable  scouts  —  he 
had  brought  with  him  to  Durban  two  of  his  Somali 
gun-carriers.  After  landing  with  them  at  Durban  and 
reporting  himself  to  the  military  head-quarters  as  a 
former  captain  in  the  Indian  Army,  he  had  the  deuce- 
and-all  of  a  bother  to  get  food  and  lodging  for  these 
wretched  Somalis,  who  were  at  once  classed  by  the 
ignorant  Natalians  as  "  just  ordinary  niggers  "... 
though  why  "  just  ordinary  niggers  "  should  be  so  ill- 
treated,  he  could  not  understand.  No  hotel  would 
•lodge  or  feed  them  except  in  a  kind  of  pigsty  with 
hog-wash  for  food,  where  the  kitchen  Kafirs  abode. 
They  might  not  go  into  a  shop  and  buy  food,  or  rather 
they  might  go  in  but  no  one  would  serve  them.  After 
dark  they  must  have  a  "  pass."  They  very  narrowly 
escaped  jail  and  the  whip  and  disappearance  for 
ever  from  his  ken  by  defending  themselves  with  all 
a  Muslim's  pride  when  cuffed  and  pushed  and 
flouted. 

Roger  very  nearly  —  for  that  reason  and  for  the 
mosquito-preserves  of  Durban  then  called  "  hotels  " — 


360      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

turned  tail  and  re-embarked  for  German  East  Africa; 
but  fortunately  there  came  along  a  Colonel  who  had 
not  served  under  Wellington  or  even  seen  the  Crimea, 
but  was  no  older  than  Roger  —  42  —  and  had  known 
him  in  London. 

'  You're  just  the  type  of  man  we  want,  with  your 
knowledge  of  the  bush  and  of  niggers.  .  .  ." 

"  No,  don't  call  them  that;  it  —  it  —  riles  me  after 
the  years  I  have  worked  with  them.  ..." 

"  Well,  Negroes,  the  bonny  Bantu,  the  blameless 
Ethiopians,  if  you  will.  .  .  .  And  you  ought  to  be  a 
master-hand  at  bush-fighting.  We're  going  to  get  up 
a  sort  of  mounted  infantry,  don't  you  know.  You're 
just  the  man  to  be  given  a  small  command.  You  need 
not  tell  me  you  can't  ride,  can't  get  every  ounce  out  of 
your  mount,  'cos  I  know  better ;  or  that  you  can't  man- 
age horses  so  that  those  entrusted  to  your  men  don't 
die  in  three  weeks.  Didn't  you  once  tell  me  you  bred 
Basuto  ponies  in  G.E.A.?  Well,  I'm  here,  there,  and 
elsewhere,  buying  Basuto  ponies.  Just  stay  here  and 
get  your  uniform  and  equipment  —  here,  give  this  card 
to  our  Supply  department  —  and  then  report  to  Gen- 
eral Buller.  I'm  writing  him  fully  about  you.  .  .  . 
Oh  yes.  .  .  .  And  as  to  your  nigs.  I  mean  your  two 
high-bred  Fuzzie-wuzzies.  Of  course,  we  don't  em- 
ploy Negro  soldiers  .  .  .  'gainst  the  rules.  But  we 
engage  thousands  as  batmen,  transport-riders,  grooms,, 
and  everything  else.  I'll  fix  it  up  somehow  that  you 
take  your  two  darkies  with  you.  They  seem  to  know 
what  I'm  sayin'.  What  jolly  teeth.  They  look  hefty 
men  and  a  dam'  sight  handsomer  than  some  of  the 
Johnnies  you'll  see  on  the  Rand,  when  we've  got  Oom 
Paul  on  the  run  .  .  ." 

So  in  course  of  time,  Roger,  first  brevet-Major  for 
gallantry  in  action,  then  a  full  Major  —  if  there  is  such 


THE  BOER  WAR  361 

a  simple  rank  no  longer  qualified  with  adjectives  (but 
I  know  after  his  campaigns  in  the  Transvaal  he  was 
always  styled  "  Major  "  Brentham,  till  he  was  made  a 
Colonel)  —  found  his  way  (always  attended  by  Yusuf 
Ali  and  Anshuro,  his  Somali  batmen)  into  the  eastern 
Transvaal  at  the  period  when  President  Kruger  and  the 
other  members  of  his  Government  were  leaving  Pre- 
toria for  the  Portuguese  frontier. 

In  the  month  of  August  he  took  part  in  a  concen- 
tration of  British  forces  against  two  Boer  commandos 
in  the  north-east  Transvaal.  This  resulted  in  a  tech- 
nical victory  for  the  British,  but  whilst  the  tide  of 
battle  rolled  away  northwards  to  seize  Pietersburg, 
the  Boers  were  left  in  possession  of  the  site  of  the  first 
skirmish.  And  in  a  sudden  hush  after  great  clamour 
Roger  realized  that  he  was  lying  in  the  shade  of  some 
bushes  near  a  little  spruit  of  water,  shot  through  the 
thigh  and  quite  incapable  of  sitting  up.  The  bullet 
or  bullets  had  gone  clean  through  the  fleshy  part  of  the 
right  thigh  and  grazed  the  knee  of  the  left  leg.  Hap- 
pily they  had  not  broken  the  thigh  bone  or  cut  the  great 
artery.  The  Somalis,  who  had  a  magical  faculty  of 
turning  up  when  most  wanted,  had  come  in  handy  as 
Tenderers  of  first  aid,  had  stopped  the  haemorrhage. 
They  now  squatted  on  the  ground  beside  their  fainting 
master,  fanned  his  sweating  face,  gave  him  water  to 
drink  and  occasionally  sprinkled  his  chest  and  forehead 
with  water  to  ward  off  the  deadly  faintness.  .  .  . 

A  Boer  Colonel  came  riding  by,  scanning  closely  the 
scene  of  the  struggle.  He  claimed  the  unconscious 
Roger  as  his  prisoner  —  out  of  pity  —  and  whistled  up 
carriers  and  a  stretcher  to  bear  him  to  the  nearest 
dressing-station. 

Here  he  was  attended  to  by  one  of  the  numerous 
German  doctors  who  had  volunteered  for  service  with 
the  Boer  armies. 


362      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

From  Major  Roger  Brentham,  D.S.O.,  to  Lady  Sil- 

chester. 

British  Hospital, 

Unguja, 

Novr.  27,  1900. 
DEAREST  SIBYL, — 

A  steamer  coming  from  the  south  to-day  brought 
me  your  letter  of  last  March!  I  had  got  several  of 
your  postcards  showing  yourself  and  Lady  Landolphia 
in  nurses'  uniform  and  with  dreadful  smiles  of  glitter- 
ing teeth,  and  knew  of  course  —  heard,  I  mean  — 
what  you  were  doing  for  our  men  out  in  South  Africa. 
The  letter  was  sent  on  by  my  Agents;  I  expect  it  got 
hung  up  in  the  military  censorship,  and  I  must  say  I 
don't  blame  them !  Your  unconscious  criticisms  of  our 
generalship  were  pretty  pungent.  I  wonder  I  got  it  at 
all.  But  better  late  than  never !  After  I  have  read  it 
a  third  time  I  shall  burn  it  because  there  is  one  classi- 
cal tag  I  never  forget:  Littera  scripta  manet. 

I  see  by  the  London  papers  of  September  you  are 
not  only  back  in  England  —  or  rather  Scotland  —  but 
entertaining  as  of  yore  at  Glen  Sporran.  And  playing 
with  the  same  old  toys !  How  indefatigable  you  are  in 
your  pursuit  of  power!  How  unwearied  by  the  social 
routine,  which  would  drive  me  into  exile  or  into  mur- 
der. I  should  end  by  killing  the  poor  old  fantoches  — 
Vicky  Long-i'-the-Tooth,  Stacy  Bream,  and  the  others 
—  I  forget  their  names  —  the  Right  Honble.  gentleman 
who  spat  like  a  cobra  —  only  it  was  very  kindly  saliva, 
not  at  all  venomous  —  and  that  moral  enthusiast  over 
the  Empire  —  Albert  Something.  I  see  by  the  same 
paper  he  is  now  Lord  Bewdly  and  has  been  uttering 
some  beautiful  sentiments  over  the  results  expected 
from  the  Boer  War.  .  .  .  You  were  Stellenbosched, 
and  with  reason,  because  your  hospitals  and  conva- 
lescent homes  were  there  (I  see,  by  the  bye,  that  Wil- 


THE  BOER  WAR  363 

lowby  Patterne,  who  came  an  awful  cropper  at  Drie- 
fontein  and  generally  misconducted  himself,  was  also 
Stellenbosched  by  K.  of  K.  I  hope  you  did  not  fore- 
gather with  him?)  .  .  .  Well,  as  I  was  saying,  you 
were  Stellenbosched  and  saw  little  of  the  horrors  of 
War.  But  I  did,  and  I  used  often  to  wish  that  Albert 
person  could  have  been  with  me  and  seen  the  burning 
of  the  homesteads,  the  cutting  down  of  the  fruit-trees, 
the  fugitive  women  and  little  children,  the  Boer  boys 
of  eleven  and  twelve  dressed  up  for  war  like  their  fa- 
thers and  elder  brothers  and  fighting  for  their  homes. 
I  saw  one  of  these  boys  —  tousled  yellow  hair,  nice 
grey  eyes  —  in  a  buckskin  suit  much  too  big  for  him, 
laid  out  to  die  by  the  road-side,  just  after  we  had  burnt 
his  father's  home.  I  don't  suppose  one  of  our  chaps 
really  set  out  to  kill  him.  But  there  it  was;  he  had 
been  shot  through  the  lungs  and  was  gasping  out  his 
life,  blood  pouring  out  of  his  mouth  at  each  gasp. 
And  yet  he  tried  to  smile  and  said  something  in  Dutch 
about  his  father  being  away.  .  .  .  Upon  my  word  I 

should  have  liked  to  get  the  Kaiser,  old  Kruger, 

and  l  all  strung  up  together  on  the  site  of  that 

farm.  For  they  are  the  four  men  who  together  made 
this  most  unnecessary  war.  I  know  what  lots  of  our 
Tommies  said  when  they  heard  Kimberley  was  re- 
lieved ! 

As  for  me,  I  was  laid  out  soon  after  with  two  bullets 
through  my  thigh.  But  for  Yusuf  Ali  and  Anshuro, 
my  two  Somalis;  and  equally  but  for  a  humane  Boer 
(Colonel  van  Rensselaer),  I  should  certainly  have  died. 
As  it  was,  the  haemorrhage  was  stopped  and  a  German 
doctor  at  the  field  hospital  nursed  me  through  a  bad 
attack  of  blood-poisoning.  I  shall  never,  of  course,  be 
quite  the  same  man  again ;  but  I  still  feel  as  though  there 
were  a  lot  of  push  in  me.  Soon  after  my  admission 

1 1  shrink  from  perpetuating  all  Roger's  indiscretions  and  im- 
pulsive statements. —  H.  H.  J. 


364      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

to  the  hospital  at  Lydenburg,  the  Boers  evacuated 
the  place  and  in  course  of  time  I  was  transported  to 
Durban  and  invalided  out  of  the  army  with  the  rank 
of  Major.  I  had  already  got  a  D.S.O.,  so  /  can't  com- 
plain. I  would  fight  any  day  for  England  against 
England's  enemies,  but  —  however,  no  more  grousing. 
Let's  hope  a  new  order  of  things  is  going  to  set  in.  I 
certainly  should  like  to  cut  my  D.S.O.  into  three  and 
give  two  equal  bits  to  Ali  and  Anshuro.  You've  no 
idea  what  those  Somali  boys  were  in  the  matter  of 
devotion,  cheerfulness,  astuteness !  And  yet  they  only 
served  me  for  the  ordinary  coast  wages;  though  of 
course  I'm  going  to  give  them  both  a  handsome  dona- 
tion when  their  time  is  up. 

Well :  here  I  am  at  a  hospital  once  more.  I  must 
rest  here  and  get  my  leg  quite  sound  before  I  start  for 
up-country.  I  have  been  here  for  a  month,  in  tele- 
graphic communication  with  Lucy  and  Maud,  implor- 
ing them  not  to  come  down  to  the  coast  to  meet  me. 
Lucy,  I  fear,  is  far  from  strong;  and  Maud  is  simply 
indispensable  to  the  carrying  on  of  the  work  up  there. 
She  has  shown  herself  as  good  as  a  man.  The  two 
Australians  I  put  there  have  done  their  best,  but  they 
don't  get  on  at  all  well  with  the  Germans.  Their  edu- 
cation has  been  very  poor  —  I  mean  in  book-learning 
—  they  are  rattling  good  in  settlers'  lore  —  and,  of 
course,  they  utterly  refuse  to  understand  German  and 
openly  gibe  at  it.  Their  chief  recommendation  is  that 
they  are  absolutely  honest.  .  .  . 

I  lie  here  chafing  and  intensely  anxious  for  my  worst 
wound  to  heal.  I  am  told  I  ought  to  be  thankful  to 
have  made  such  a  wonderful  recovery.  But  I  feel  a 
month  of  Lucy's  care  for  me  and  the  bracing  air  of 
Iraku  would  set  me  up  altogether;  and  my  mere  pres- 
ence at  Magara  put  an  end  to  all  these  misunderstand- 
ings and  bitternesses. 


THE  BOER  WAR  365 

The  Schraders  were  rather  aghast  at  my  bolt  for 
South  Africa  last  year;  but  stood  it  on  the  whole  very 
well.  Of  course,  I  insisted  on  being  reduced  to  a  third 
of  my  pay  whilst  I  was  absent.  I  retained  just  enough 
salary  to  keep  Lucy  and  Maud  going,  and  maintain  the 
household.  .  .  . 

The  whole  German  attitude  over  this  war  has  been  a 
curious  one,  and  so  have  been  its  refractions  on  their 
attitude  towards  me.  I  hear  that  after  my  departure 
for  the  war  a  strong  move  was  got  up  to  oust  me  from 
the  Managership.  Now  that  I  have  returned  wounded 
and  a  Major  and  a  D.S.O.  (that  was  given  me  the 
other  day,  for  capturing  Colonel  Boshaert  and  three 
hundred  men  and  a  thousand  cattle  near  Lydenburg  — 
tell  you  all  about  it  one  day)  they  can't  say  enough  in 
my  favour.  I  am  almost  threatened  with  a  triumphal 
procession  home.  .  .  .  Engine  from  Tanga  wreathed 
with  palm  fronds,  etc.  Fortunately  the  train  will  take 
me  half  the  way  back,  and  for  the  rest  I  can  be  carried 
in  a  Machila. 

But  there  is  little  doubt  that  the  mass  of  the  Germans 
out  here  thought  we  were  going  to  be  gravelled  by  the 
Boers  and  that  Germania  would  step  into  the  shoes  of 
Britannia.  Undoubtedly  the  Kaiser  for  the  past  six 
years  has  been  fishing  in  troubled  waters,  trying  to 
connect  up  German  South-West  Africa  with  Boer  ter- 
ritory, and  planning  to  make  Germany  the  dominant 
power  in  South  Africa;  or,  at  any  rate,  the  honest 
broker  between  Boer  and  Briton.  .  .  . 

Why  the  Dutch  and  the  British  should  be  as  oil  and 
water  in  South  Africa  and  elsewhere,  I  can't  think. 
But  they  are.  The  Dutchman  in  Africa  and  Europe  is 
just  a  rather  finer  built,  better-looking  Englishman  or 
Scotchman ;  but  in  language,  mentality  and  above  all 
in  a  curiously  hard  attitude  towards  the  Negro,  he  is 
Teutonic.  The  whole  set  of  South  Africa  is  towards 


366      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

Germany.  .  .  .  That  is  why  Rhodes  lost  his  head.  .  .  . 

Your  affectionate 

ROGER. 

P.S.  See  you  next  year  or  year  after,  as  soon  as 
ever  I  have  got  everything  going  here  as  it  was  before 
the  war,  and  it  is  safe  to  come  away.  I  must  go  on 
with  this  until  I  can  retire  with  a  competency. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

THE   MORALS   OF   THE    HAPPY   VALLEY 

AM  so  glad,  so  truly  glad  you  are  almost  your 
old  self  again,"  said  Mrs.  Stott,  one  brilliant 
morning  in  the  spring  of  1901,  to  Major  Brentham, 
who  had  been  four  months  back  at  his  home  in  Iraku. 
He  did  indeed  look  as  if  he  had  in  a  measure  recov- 
ered his  good  looks  and  energy,  though  the  right  leg 
was  still  stiff  and  much  riding  or  walking  brought  on 
pain. 

"  It  emboldens  me  to  embark  on  a  very  disagreeable 
subject  which  I  have  been  saving  up  to  discuss  with 
you.  We  cannot  evade  it  much  longer ;  so  —  if  you 
have  the  patience — ?" 

"  I  am  always  patient  with  you,  Mrs.  Stott.  There 
are  few  people  I  respect  more.  .  .  ." 

"  Thank  you.  Then  I  shall  take  up  an  hour  or  more 
of  your  time,  if  you  are  not  very  busy.  But  how  is 
Lucy?" 

"  Lucy  is  not  well ;  anaemic,  Dr.  Wiese  says.  I 
should  send  her  home,  only  she  refuses  to  go  without 
me  and  I  can't  leave  till  next  year.  Dr.  Wiese  does 
not  insist  on  her  going  before  then.  He  is  trying  a 
new  tonic  which  seems  to  be  blood-making;  it  ought 
to  be,  because  —  though  I  do  not  tell  Lucy  —  it  is  made 
of  blood  —  one  of  these  new  German  inventions. 
Wiese  says  if  we  would  only  do  like  the  Masai  and  the 
Iraku :  tap  the  veins  of  our  cattle  and  drink  the  hot 
blood  — " 

"  Ugh !  don't  let's  talk  about  it ;  it  makes  me  sick. 
I'm  almost  a  vegetarian,  you  know.  Couldn't  we  go 

367 


368      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

into  your  study  ?  It  is  delicious  here  on  the  verandah, 
but  I  don't  want  to  be  overheard." 

"  Certainly :  come  this  way." 

"  What  wonderful  petunias,  yours  are !  I  never  saw 
such  glowing  colours.  Your  whole  garden  is  a  joy  to 
the  eye  and  a  credit  to  the  Concession.  .  .  ." 

"  You're  right.  But  the  credit  lies  with  Riemer,  the 
plantation  manager ;  he  gives  it  an  eye.  The  Germans 
are  wonderful  horticulturists.  I  don't  think  we  suffi- 
ciently appreciate  that  fact  at  home.  They  are  as  good 
as  the  Dutch.  Now  then,  here  we  are  in  my  sanctum 

—  rather  untidy,  I  fear.  .  .  .  Take  this  chair  .  .  ." 

"  No,  it  is  too  reclining.  I  do  like  an  upright 
straight-backed  chair  when  I  want  to  speak  out.  My 
daughters  say  I'm  like  a  character  in  one  of  Dickens's 
books,  who  could  never  loll.  They're  wonderful  read- 
ers and  remember  everything  they've  read.  .  .  ." 

"  Well  now,  what's  the  trouble  ?  " 

"  It's  —  it's  —  this  —  horrid  —  sexual  question  I've 
come  about.  You  know  what  Ann  Anderson  is  —  I 
prefer  to  call  her  Ann  Jamblin  —  I  don't  like  the  two 
'  An's '  together.  Ann  has  a  wonderful  power  for 
good,  an  energy  in  righteousness,  and  is  as  nearly  sin- 
less as  any  woman  can  be.  But  she's  also  got  such 
an  insight  into  other  people's  sinfulness  that  she  spends 
much  of  her  time  denouncing  their  wrong-doing  — 
too  much,  I  think.  I  tell  her  she's  out  here  to  con- 
vert the  blacks,  and  for  the  time  being  had  better  leave 
the  whites  alone.  But  she  pays  no  heed  to  me  —  says 
her  mission  is  to  all  men.  She  simply  won't  let  the 
Germans  alone.  We  had  terrible  rows  sometimes 
when  you  were  away,  though  your  sister  did  what  she 
could  to  smooth  things  over.  I  admit  some  of  them 
are  utterly  wicked.  There  is  that  monster  Stolzenberg 

—  whom  the  Masai  call  '  The  Terror  ' —  Olduria  — . 
After  he  came  to  the  Lake  with  his  Ruga-ruga  last 
October  and  shot  all  the  flamingoes.  .  .  ." 


THE  MORALS  OF  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY     369 

"WHAT?  "  roared  Roger,  leaping  to  his  feet,  and 
then  wincing  ..."  I  never  heard  this  before  .  .  .!  " 
"  No  ?     Well :  sit  down.     You  ought  to  rest  your 
leg.-    Lucy  didn't  want  you  to  know.     She  thought  it 
would  upset  you  so  —  And  indeed,  it  was  a  shocking 
pity.  .  .  .  But  you'd  soon  have  noticed  how  few  there 
are  left  —  even  from  here  on  a  clear  day.  ...  I  un- 
derstand Stolzenberg  sent  a  huge  consignment  of  their 
plumage  to  a  firm  he  trades  with  in  Marseilles.     And 
he  has  been  going  about  to  other  lakes  doing  the  same. 
But  I  must  stick  to  the  point.  .  .  .  Where  was   I? 
Oh,  yes !  .  .  .  Ann,  who  lives  in  our  old  station  at 
Mvvada,  was  awfully  upset  because  she  had  become  so 
fond  of  these  birds,  besides  being  infuriated  at  Stolzen- 
berg's   Ruga-ruga   occasionally   carrying   off   women. 
So  she  wrote  him  a  letter  saying  that  if  he  showed  him- 
self in  the  Concession  again  she  would  take  a  gun  to 
him  herself.     She  solemnly  cursed  him  and  called  down 
Divine  punishment  on  his  head.     Unfortunately  —  for 
I  think  the  whole  thing  was  most  unwise  —  she  paid  a 
Masai  who  came  along  to  trade  to  deliver  the  letter  at 
Stolz's  boma.     The  watchman  at  the  gate  made  him 
come  in  and  give  the  letter  himself,  and  Stolz  having 
read  it  had  the  man's  left  hand  chopped  off,  tied  it  to 
his  right,  and  said  that  was  the  answer  to  the  English 
Missionaries  and  that  was  how  he'd  treat  any  other 
messengers  sent  to  him.  .  .  .  The  poor  wretch  arrived 
at  Mwada  a  week  afterwards  nearly  dead  with  loss  of 
blood.  ...  Of  course,  the  Masai  have  again  sworn 
vengeance  against  this  monster :  but  what  can  they  do  ? 
But  that  is  not  our  worst  trouble.     Before  you  went, 
and  whilst  you  were  away,  Ann  took  up  the  sex  ques- 
tion.    You  know  how  set  she  was  on  the  elevation  of 
the   native   women?     You   used   to    laugh   about   her 
corps  of  Amazons,  her  '  Big-geru.'     She  hadn't  been 
long  with  us  before  she  began  to  interest  herself  in  the 
young  women   of    Iraku.   .  .  .  Those   of    the    Warn- 


370      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

bngwe  are,  I  must  confess,  hopeless  at  present ;  I  mean 
as  regards  chastity.  Poor  things!  They  are  cor- 
rupted and  degraded  from  childhood.  But  there  is 
something  superior  —  something  of  another  race  in  the 
Iraku  and  Fiome.  You  said  once  they  were  partly  de- 
scended from  some  Gala  immigration  of  long  ago?  .  .  . 

"  Well,  Ann,  who  is  untirable,  started  a  class  of 
these  Iraku  young  women  before  she  had  been  six 
months  in  the  Happy  Valley.  The  chiefs  —  I  dare  say 
you  remember  speaking  to  some  of  them?  .  .  .  quite 
approved  and  sent  their  young  daughters.  She  taught 
them  cooking  and  laundry  work,  plain  sewing,  reading 
and  writing.  And  now  she  finds,  after  they  have  been 
a  year  or  two  at  our  schools,  they  go  off  and  live  with 
white  men.  ...  !  " 

Roger:  "  I  dare  say  they  do,  and  have  a  much  bet- 
ter time  with  them  than  with  their  own  men.  But 
what  white  men?  German,  I  suppose?  .  .  ." 

Mrs.  Stott:  "  Ah,  there  you  touch  my  greatest  sor- 
row. Yes.  Every  German  I  know  on  this  concession 
keeps  a  native  woman,  mostly  from  our  classes.  But  I 
fear  —  I  fear  —  my  nephew  Phil  and  the  clerk  Stalli- 
brass  as  well  —  my  two  Australian  boys  —  are  not 
much  more  moral.  Their  relations  with  the  native 
women  won't  bear  investigation.  That  is  not  all  ... 
and  I  have  no  right  to  be  here  as  an  accuser  when  I 
can't  answer  for  my  own  son,  Edgar.  .  .  .  You  re- 
member you  offered  in  1897  to  take  him  home  with 
you,  and  have  him  sent  to  an  English  school  or  college 
for  a  year  or  two?  I  wish  ...  I  wish  .  .  .  we  had 
consented.  It  was  so  good  of  you.  But  we  thought 
at  the  time  that  if  children  can  grow  up  into  God-fear- 
ing men  and  women  in  Australia  without  leaving  the 
back-blocks  or  the  bush,  why  not  here,  where  the  cli- 
mate is  good?  Then  there  was  the  question  of  the 
cost. 


THE  MORALS  OF  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY     371 

Roger:  "  I  suppose  he  has  got  all  his  education 
from  you  and  his  father?  " 

_  Mrs.  Stott:  "  Yes,  indeed.  The  main  thing,  be- 
sides religion,  was  to  teach  our  children  to  read  and 
write  and  do  simple  accounts.  All  they  wanted  be- 
sides was  to  read  the  books  we  ordered  out.  .  .  .  I'm 
sure  you  can't  say  we  have  been  indifferent  to  litera- 
tare?" 

Roger:  "  No  —  not  of  a  certain  kind  .  .  .  but  all 
of  it,  from  what  I  have  seen,  is  rather  old-fashioned 
and  goody-goody.  ..." 

Mrs.  Stott:  "  I  don't  agree.  However,  I  won't 
stop  to  argue  about  it.  It  matters  little,  since  Edgar 
from  the  age  of  twelve  or  thirteen  has  cared  very  little 
for  reading.  His  passion  is  sport.  And  to  think  how 
I  ran  down  big-game  shooting,  when  it  was  not  vitally 
necessary  for  our  supplies!  Of  course,  James  is  a 
good  shot  and  a  clever  hunter,  and  Edgar,  after  he  was 
twelve,  used  to  go  out  with  him.  He  killed  an  ele- 
phant to  his  own  gun  when  he  was  only  fifteen,  and  the 
tusks  fetched  as  much  as  £60 !  He  was  proud.  Now 
his  one  idea  is  to  be  away  shooting  .  .  .  and  trifling 
with  these  Iraku  women.  Oh!"  (crying  a  little). 
"  Can't  you  see  how  it  silences  me  ?  Ann  talks  about 
cutting  off  a  member  that  offends  and  says  I  should  ex- 
pel my  own  son  from  the  Mission  for  loose  living.  .  .  . 
I  can't  do  that,  and  besides  there's  nothing  proved.  .  .  . 
But  I  can't  very  well  join  her  in  her  crusade  against 
.  .  .  she  will  use  such  plain  words  .  .  .  against  forni- 
cation and  unclean  living.  I  suppose  we  shall  have  to 
send  Edgar  away  .  .  .  back  to  Australia  .  .  .  And 
then  I  fear  much  for  his  future.  Thank  goodness! 
He's  a  total  abstainer,  so  far.  .  .  .  Ought  we  to  invite 
some  young  woman  to  come  out  here  for  the  mission, 
in  the  hope  that  he  might  marry  her  and  settle  down  ?  " 

Roger:     "Wouldn't  be  a  bad  idea,   if  you  could 


372      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

insure  her  taking  his  fancy.  I  haven't  seen  Master 
Edgar  for  months  or  taken  much  notice  of  him  since 
he  came  to  man's  estate.  Struck  me,  he  was  growing 
up  a  nice-looking  lad.  .  .  ." 

Mrs.  Stott:  "  Indeed  he  is !  It's  his  good  looks 
that  are  his  snare.  .  .  .  The  native  women  run  after 
him  so.  .  .  ." 

Roger:  "  Does  he  work  for  us  or  for  the  Mis- 
sion? " 

Mrs.  Stott:  "  He  is  his  father's  assistant  in  the 
Carpentering  school;  but  he's  too  much  given  to  lark- 
ing with  the  boys,  who  look  upon  him  as  a  kind  of  hero. 
Of  course,  he  speaks  their  language  almost  as  if  it 
came  natural  to  him.  His  real  bent  is  for  Natural 
History  .  .  .  that's  the  only  excuse  for  his  sport.  We 
sell  the  collections  he  makes  to  the  Germans.  One  of 
your  mining  engineers  has  taught  him  photography. 
He  takes  wonderful  pictures  of  wild  life.  We  posted 
some  home  to  the  Graphic,  and  with  the  money  they 
paid,  Edgar  sent  to  Unguja  and  bought  himself  a  snap- 
shot camera.  .  .  .  Am  I  keeping  you  from  your 
work?" 

Roger:  "  You  are :  but  we  don't  often  meet 
nowadays  for  a  talk.  Let's  thrash  this  matter  out. 
Well?"' 

Mrs.  Stott:  "  Well,  I  was  going  on  to  say,  with  all 
this  Edgar's  mind  is  turning  away  from  religion.  We 
have  hard  work  to  get  him  to  attend  our  services.  .  .  . 
He  even  shocked  his  father  the  other  day  by  saying  he 
was  sick  of  the  Bible.  ...  I  say,  '  even,'  because  ever 
since  my  dear  James  has  been  getting  up  these  indus- 
trial schools  you  were  so  keen  on,  he  has  become  less 
and  less  spiritually  minded,  more  and  more  interested 
in  the  material  things  of  this  world.  He  only  pretends 
to  care  for  the  Second  Coming  of  Christ  .  .  .  just  to 
please  me.  He  is  much  more  interested  in  his  new 
turning  lathe"  .  .  .  (dabs  her  eyes  and  blows  her 


THE  MORALS  OF  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY      373 

nose).     "His  prayers  have  become  very  trite.     If  it 
wasn't  for  my  daughters.  .  .  ." 

Roger:  "  Let  me  see :  you  have  two  daughters  out 
here  —  Pretty  girls.  .  .  .  They  must  be  growing 
up.  .  .  ." 

Mrs.  Stott:  '  Yes.  Carrie's  nearly  nineteen ;  and 
Lulu  is  sixteen.  We  called  her  '  Luisa,'  not  from  the 
English  name,  but  because  '  Luisa  '  means  '  darkness  ' 
in  Kagulu,  and  when  she  was  born  she  had  dark  hair 
and  dark  eyes  .  .  .  she's  fairer  now.  .  .  .  And  the 
way,  then,  seemed  dark  before  us.  ...  I  was  very  ill 
at  the  time.  .  .  ." 

Roger:  "  And  then  the  eldest  of  all  is  at  home,  I 
mean  in  England.  ...  ?  " 

Mrs.  Stott:  "  Yes.  Rosamund,  named  after  me. 
She's  a  school  teacher  in  Ireland,  and  practically  a 
stranger  to  us.  That's  one  of  the  sorrows  of  our  life 
out  here.  Not  that  we  haven't  many  blessings  to  coun- 
ter-balance it  —  I'm  sure  the  way  we've  kept  our 
health  in  the  Happy  Valley  —  But  we  have  either  to 
send  our  children  away  to  England  or  Australia,  or 
bring  them  up  here,  with  many  disadvantages.  It 
would  be  a  pity  to  bring  Rosamund  away  from  a  career 
where  she  is  doing  very  well.  .  .  ." 

Roger:  "  Quite  so.  Well  then,  we  have  only  to 
deal  with  Carrie  as  a  possible  wife  to  one  of  our  young 
men.  .  .  ." 

Mrs.  Stott:  "  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Riemer  proposed 
to  her  a  few  months  ago.  But  Carrie  is  very  particu- 
lar; and  besides,  she  wouldn't  marry  a  German.  .  .  ." 
Roger:  "What  nonsense!  In  what  way  are  they 
inferior  to  Englishmen  or  Australians?  I'm  sure 
Riemer  .  .  ." 

Mrs.  Stott  (tightening  her  lips)  :  "  Not  to  be 
thought  of.  Riemer  is  an  avowed  atheist  .  .  ." 

Roger:  "  Oh,  of  course,  if  religion  is  to  come  in 
the  way.  .  .  ." 


374      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

Mrs.  Stott:  "  It  isn't  only  religion,  there  are  other 
things.  No.  Don't  let  my  daughters  come  under  dis- 
cussion. Why  couldn't  the  Germans  here  send  home 
for  nice  German  girls  to  come  out  and  marry  them,  or 
get  married  when  they  next  went  on  leave  ...  ?  " 

Roger:  "Why  not,  indeed?  I'll  talk  to  them. 
Much  better  they  should  do  so.  But  then,  what'll  hap- 
pen by  and  by  is  what  you  don't  want  to  happen. 
The  Germans  will  marry  white  women,  have  large 
families  and  gradually  push  out  the  Negroes  and  turn 
this  into  a  W^hite  Man's  country  —  unless  the  climate 
and  the  germ  diseases  forbid.  .  .  .  I'm  not  sure  my- 
self that  I  don't  favour  a  mixture  of  races  and  that  the 
Americans  for  example  are  not  better  suited  to  America 
because  of  their  strong  underlying  element  of  Indian 
blood  —  I  suppose  you  would  not  like  it  if  the  Germans 
married  their  concubines?" 

Mrs.  Stott:  "  As  an  Australian  I  am  prejudiced 
against  the  mixture  of  the  races  .  .  ." 

Roger:  "  Well,  but  Dame  Nature  isn't,  in  her  in- 
consequent way.  First  she  prompts  the  original  hu- 
man ancestors  —  your  Adam  and  Eve  —  to  segregate 
and  separate  and  differentiate  into  sub-species,  almost. 
Then  she  seems  sorry  for  it,  and  does  all  she  can  to 
bring  them  together  again,  prompts  the  White  man  to 
travel  all  over  the  world  and  mix  his  blood  freely  with 
that  of  the  other  races.  She  has  been  redeeming  the 
Negro  from  his  original  blackness  and  apishness  by 
sending  white  immigrants  into  Africa  for  thousands  of 
years  —  Egyptians,  Carthaginians,  Romans,  Greeks, 
Arabs,  Indians;  Portuguese,  Dutch,  French,  English; 
to  say  nothing  of  all  the  Mediterranean  peoples  who 
pressed  into  Africa  in  prehistoric  days.  They  have 
all  mingled  with  the  Negro  in  their  time  and  re-human- 
ized him.  You  own  to  a  penchant  for  the  Iraku  peo- 
ple. Why?  Even  for  the  Masai.  Why  do  you 
really  prefer  them  to  the  out-and-out  Negro  type,  like 


THE  MORALS  OF  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY     375 

the  Kindiga  and  Wambugwe?  Because  they  have  a 
strain  of  ancient  white  blood  in  their  veins.  Same 
thing  with  the  Swahili.  We  like  them  because  of  the 
Arab  intermixture.  And  yet  we  talk  and  write  a  lot 
of  rubbish  about  disliking  the  half-caste  between  a 
European  and  a  Negro —  By  the  bye,  since  we  are 
talking  on  this  subject,  did  I  or  did  I  not  see  a  half- 
caste  child  in  the  compound  of  Schnitzler,  that  mining 
engineer  who  is  such  a  friend  of  Edgar's?  " 

Mrs.  Stott:  "  You  did,  at  least  Schnitzler's  native 
woman  has  had  a  child  by  him  —  two  years  ago.  And 
if  you  looked  all  through  the  settlement  you  could  find 
three  other  half-caste  infants.  .  .  .  They  make  no 
secret  of  it.  .  .  ." 

Roger:  "Why  should  they?  If  they  must  form 
these  unions,  it  is  better  they  should  be  sanctified  by 
the  production  of  children.  I  must  say  it  redeems  the 
whole  thing  in  my  eyes ;  the  Germans  don't  ignore  their 
half-caste  children,  but  have  them  properly  brought  up. 
It  is  better  than  what  you  call  '  sinning  in  secret '  and 
blushing  at  —  or  repudiating  the  consequences.  .  .  . 
This  maddening  question  of  sexual  irregularities, 
which  now  seems  to  clog  the  progress  of  all  European 
Colonies,  and  to  fill  up  the  press  of  the  United  States 
and  of  England  —  are  they  always  writing  about  it  in 
Australia?" 

Mrs.  Stott:  "  Strange  to  say,  we  never  get  any 
Australian  papers.  I  don't  know  whether  Phil  does 
either.  ...  I  seem  to  belong  so  very  much  more  to 
England  or  to  north  Ireland,  where  all  my  relations 
live.  .  .  ." 

Roger:  "...  I  often  wish  the  Almighty  or  Na- 
ture or  Chance  —  or  whatever  it  was  that  developed 
us  out  of  lifeless  matter  —  had  not  tried  this  clever 
trick  of  the  two  sexes  —  I  suppose  it  began  a  hundred 
million  years  ago,  in  the  union  of  two  entirely  different 
microbes.  I  wish  we  had  been  allowed  to  go  on  in- 


3;6      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

creasing  by  fissure,  by  budding.  Certainly  among  the 
world-problems  of  to-day  it  is  the  most  difficult  to 
solve.  I  sometimes  feel  irritated  against  Christianity 
for  the  fuss  it  makes  about  Chastity.  But  I  imagine 
it  arose  from  the  tremendous  revulsion  that  took  place 
in  the  Eastern  Mediterranean  two  thousand  years  ago 
against  an  excessive  sexual  licence:  just  in  those  very 
countries  where  the  purest  doctrines  of  self-restraint 
were  afterwards  preached.  The  Christian  ideal  cer- 
tainly seems  the  most  likely  to  promote  a  good  type 
of  human  being,  but  it  is  very  hard  to  live  up  to.  ... 
Yet  what  texts  you  could  find  —  in  favour  of  Chastity 
—  you  missionaries  —  if  you  only  realized  the  history 
of  the  Negro  and  did  not  go  merely  to  the  Old  and 
New  Testament  for  your  pegs  to  hang  a  sermon  on. 
The  Negro  is  in  his  present  inferior  position  because 
he  has  weakened  his  mental  energy  by  extravagant 
sexual  indulgence  —  and  limited  his  numbers.  Do  you 
find  the  Happy  Valley  any  less  depraved  than  Nguru 
or  Ugogo  ?  '' 

Mrs.  Stott:  "I  should  think  not.  A  little  worse, 
if  possible!  I  assure  you,  Major  Brentham,  when  we 
first  arrived  from  Australia  I  had  no  conception  there 
could  exist  such  depravity,  such  vices.  They  were  re- 
ferred to  here  and  there  in  the  Bible.  But  I  did  not 
know  what  the  references  meant.  ..." 

Roger:  "  Well:  there  you  are.  That  is  a  justifica- 
tion for  your  being  here,  as  in  other  parts  of  Africa. 
...  If  you  and  we  can  only  give  the  Negro  something 
else  to  think  of.  He  is  like  our  labouring  class  at 
home.  It  is  the  only  pleasure  he  knows  of.  Give  him 
education,  ambition,  sports,  remunerative  work,  an  in- 
terest, even,  in  better  food,  in  better  houses,  pictures, 
music,  theatres.  .  ."  (Mrs.  Stott  shudders.)  "Well: 
there  you  are,  making  a  face  at  the  theatre.  You  won't 
distract  the  Negro  —  or  the  European  —  from  indulg- 
ing sexual  desires  by  prayers  and  hymns  and  the  read- 


THE  MORALS  OF  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY     377 

ing  of  ancient  scriptures :  that's  certain.  I  know  we 
differ  there,  and  you  must  be  already  worn  out  with 
this  lengthy  conversation.  As  you've  stayed  so  long, 
stay  a  little  longer  and  have  lunch  with  us  ?  Lucy  was 
only  saying  this  morning  she  never  sees  you  nowadays. 
You  can  go  and  have  a  talk  to  her,  while  I  glance 
through  these  reports.  See,  by  the  bye,  they  give  your 
donkey  a  feed,  and  put  it  safely  in  the  stable.  The 
other  day  one  of  ours  disappeared.  Of  course,  they 
said  it  was  a  leopard " 

At  luncheon.  The  dining-room  at  Magara  House 
is  a  fair-sized  apartment,  with  walls  of  well-smoothed 
cement  surface  of  pinkish  tone,  due  to  red  ochre  being 
mixed  with  the  cement.  On  the  walls  are  hung  a  few 
clever  pastel  studies  done  by  a  talented  German  horti- 
culturist who  has  an  eye  for  colour  and  design;  there 
are  trophies  of  shields  and  spears ;  there  is  a  dado  of 
native  matting;  and  a  smooth  floor  surface  of  red 
chunam  plaster,  made  by  Indian  masons  from  the  coast. 
In  a  pleasant  bay  which  looks  on  to  the  front  veran- 
dah a  magnificent  lion's  skin  lies  between  the  window- 
seats.  .  .  . 

A  Swahili  butler  and  footman  clothed  in  long  white 
kanzus,  with  white  "  open-work  "  skull-caps,  and  black, 
gold-embroidered  visibao,1  are  serving  the  luncheon, 
cooked  admirably  by  the  still  surviving  husband  of 
Halima,  the  Goanese  Andrade.  The  meal  consists  of 
chicken  broth,  flavoured  with  grated  coco-nut  and  red 
chillies;  curried  prawns  (out  of  tins)  ;  kid  cutlets  and 
chip  potatoes ;  Mango  "  fool  " ;  and  a  maccdoinc  de 
fruits  —  fresh  pineapple,  bananas,  sliced  papaw,  and 
oranges.  [A  little  Rhine  wine  flavoured  the  fruit- 
salad  and  was  served  at  table  with  Seltzer  water.] 
Then,  in  the  alcove  with  the  lion  skin  [the  door-window 
opens  on  to  the  verandah  with  the  petunia  beds  below 
1  Sleeveless  waistcoats. 


378      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

in  carmine  and  purple  blaze]  the  servants  place  Turkish 
coffee  and  cigarettes.  Mrs.  Stott  only  drinks  Seltzer 
water  and  declines  a  cigarette;  but  thoroughly  enjoys 
her  lunch  and  congratulates  Lucy  on  the  flower-decora- 
tions of  the  table.  .  .  . 

"  It's  Hamisi,  our  butler,  that  deserves  your  praise. 
I  get  so  easily  tired  in  these  days  that  I  seldom  do  the 
flowers  as  I  used.  I  make  up  for  it  by  doing  all  the 
mending  that  Maud  will  let  me  have  and  writing  all 
the  letters  home.  John  and  Maudie  expect  a  full  ac- 
count of  our  doings  every  month.  .  .  .  And  dear  sis- 
ter Maud  that  is  here,  is  always  busy  over  our  accounts 
and  Roger's  business  correspondence  and  her  poultry 
farming.  You  know  whilst  Roger  was  in  South  Af- 
rica she  almost  took  his  place ! " 

"  Oh,  as  to  that,"  says  Maud,  who  has  a  strong  sense 
of  justice,  "  you  must  all  admit  Hildebrandt  and  Dr. 
Wiese  both  played  up.  I  shall  never  forget  how  loyal 
they  were  to  Roger  .  .  .  they  might  have  been  Eng- 
lishmen .  .  .  and  that,  too,  at  a  time  when  other  Ger- 
mans out  here  were  looking  askance  at  us,  and  that 
horrible  Stolzenberg  was  threatening  to  raid  the  Con- 
cession and  seize  the  mines  .  .  ." 

"  By  the  bye,"  says  Roger,  "  you  never  told  me, 
either  of  you,  about  the  Flamingo  outrage.  There  are 
many  things  I  could  forgive,  but  not  that.  It  was  one 
of  my  great  pleasures  out  here,  going  to  see  the  Stotts 
and  watching  the  flamingoes  on  the  lake  shore.  If  I'd 
been  here  at  the  time  I  should  certainly  have  followed 
up  the  brute  and  shot  him  .  .  ." 

"  We  didn't  tell  you  because  we  wanted  you  to  get 
well,  and  feared  you  might  do  something  violent  before 
your  leg  was  healed." 

"  Well,  now  that  I  know,  I  shall  certainly  lodge  a 
strong  complaint  with  the  German  Commandant  at 
Kondoa.  .  .  ." 

"  Ann  Anderson  has  solemnly  cursed  him  for  his 


THE  MORALS  OF  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY     379 

cruelty,"  said  Mrs.  Stott.  "  She  said  so  in  the  letter 
she  sent  him  by  the  poor  Masai  whose  hand  he  chopped 
off.  I  think  that,  by  the  bye,  is  better  worth  taking 
up  with  the  authorities  than  the  flamingo  massacre. 
I'm  afraid  you  won't  find  many  of  the  Germans  sym- 
pathize with  you  there,  though  I  must  admit  they  are 
a  great  loss  to  the  scenery.  But  Ann  said  in  the  letter : 
'  If  man  doesn't  punish  you,  God  will.'  ' 

"  Of  course,"  said  Roger,  "  it  is  a  scandal  the  way 
the  Germans  tolerate  this  monster,  just  because,  like 
Patterne  —  I  suppose  he  hasn't  turned  up  again?  .  .  ." 

"  Don't  know." 

".  .  .  Just  because  he  lives  on  the  outskirts  of 
civilization  in  no  man's  land.  I  shall  try  a  ride  on  one 
of  the  Basuto  ponies  next  week,  go  first  of  all  and  see 
your  old  station  of  Mwada,  interview  Ann,  remind  her 
of  the  parable  of  the  Mote  and  the  Beam,  ask  her  to  go 
slow  .  .  .  with  these  denunciations  of  moral  frailty; 
and  get  some  idea  of  the  damage  done  to  the  flamin- 
goes. I  expect  my  complaints  may  draw  down  on  me 
counter  remonstrances  from  the  Germans.  I  heard  a 
growl  the  other  day  from  a  Herr  Inspektor  of  Native 
schools  that  you  taught  no  German  "  (addressing  Mrs. 
Stott),  "only  Swahili  and  a  little  English.  What 
could  you  do  in  that  respect?  I  should  not  like  them 
to  have  any  excuse  for  interference  with  you.  .  .  ." 

"  Oh!"  said  Mrs.  Stott,  her  face  paling  at  the  very 
thought,  "  after  all  the  time,  labour,  money  —  much  of 
it  your  money  —  that  we've  put  into  Mission  work  in 
the  Happy  Valley.  Oh,  why  wasn't  it  taken  over  by 
the  English  .  .  .  ?  ...  I  think  it  would  break  my 
heart  to  leave  it  and  begin  our  work  over  again.  We've 
got  so  fond  of  the  people  .  .  ." 

"  Don't  be  down-hearted,"  said  Roger,  "  I  shall 
always  stand  up  for  them  as  long  as  I'm  here,  and  I 
have  no  intention  of  going  —  except  for  a  holiday  — 
for  ever  so  long.  .  .  .  What  a  strange  noise.  .  .  ?  !  .  .  . 


380      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

A  prolonged,  distant  rumble,  like  the  sound  a  big 
avalanche  makes  in  the  Alps :  and  before  they  could 
speculate  on  its  meaning,  the  ground  trembled  under 
their  feet,  the  two-storied  house  seemed  to  sway  this 
way  and  that,  and  then  settle  itself  with  a  jarring  thud. 
Fine  dust  fell  from  the  ceiling;  trophies  of  shields  and 
spears  came  clattering  down,  the  glass  and  china  on 
the  table  tinkled,  the  finger-bowls  giving  forth  a  pro- 
longed musical  note.  Outside,  after  a  moment's  hush, 
cocks  crowed,  hens  whooped,  geese  raised  grating 
screams,  peacocks  honked  and  yelled,  turkeys  gobbled 
and  crowned  cranes  threw  back  their  golden-crested 
heads  and  uttered  their  resounding  call. 

"  An  earth  tremor,"  said  Roger  in  an  even  voice,  for 
Lucy  looked  like  fainting.  "  A  very  small  earthquake ; 
nothing  to  be  alarmed  at,  though  it  turns  one  a  bit  sick 
inside.  They  don't  often  happen.  This  is  only  the 
second  I've  experienced  in  ten  years.  You  see,  we 
live  on  the  border  of  a  volcanic  region.  Here,  Lucy! 
Pull  yourself  together.  Have  a  nip  of  brandy?  .  .  . 

"  Better  ?  Let's  get  out  into  the  air,  on  the  veran- 
dah, and  see  if  any  damage  has  been  done.  ...  I 
hope  it  won't  affect  our  mining  galleries.  .  .  ." 

But  no  reports  of  damage  from  the  earthquake  came 
to  hand.  The  natives  said  that  these  shocks  were 
sometimes  followed  by  outbursts  of  gases,  smoke, 
steam  from  one  or  other  of  the  craters  in  the  north. 

A  week  after  Mrs.  Stott's  visit,  Roger,  accompanied 
by  Maud  to  look  after  him  and  see  he  did  not  over- 
strain himself,  rode  down  into  the  Happy  Valley  to 
Mwada  station.  Here  they  interviewed  the  redoubt- 
able Ann,  now  a  square-built  grey-haired  matron  of 
middle  age  and  practically  no  sexual  charm.  She  had 
black  eyes,  glowering  under  black  eyebrows,  a  sallow 
complexion,  and  a  thin-lipped  mouth,  with  down-turned 


THE  MORALS  OF  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY      381 

corners,  like  the  mouth  of  Queen  Victoria  when  she  was 
displeased.  Ann  listened  in  grim  silence  to  Major 
Brentham's  hesitating  remonstrances.  When  he  had 
finished  she  replied  that  it  was  more  than  flesh  and 
blood  could  stand  that  she  should  be  spending  her  time 
and  the  Mission  money  training  up  native  girls  to  be 
Christian  wives  for  Christian  natives,  and  as  soon  as 
they  had  learnt  some  civilization  they  were  sought  out 
and  snapped  up  by  Germans,  inside  and  outside  the 
Concession.  It  wasn't  for  that  she  had  come  out  to 
Africa.  .  .  . 

"  I  do  feel  for  you  and  will  see  what  can  be  done," 
said  Brentham ;  "  but  at  the  same  time  we  must  re- 
member we  are  not  on  British  territory,  where  they 
stand  a  good  deal  from  the  missionaries,  but  in  German 
Africa.  The  Germans  have  made  a  handsome  ac- 
knowledgment of  what  Mr.  Stott  has  done  in  the  way 
of  industrial  teaching.  Don't  go  and  spoil  it  all  by 
being  too  ready  to  denounce  these  —  these  —  irregu- 
larities! Things  may  right  themselves  in  time.  It 
would  be  such  a  dreadful  blow  to  the  Stotts  if  they 
were  told  to  go,  to  leave  the  work  of  so  many 
years.  .  .  ." 

Ann  would  promise  nothing,  however.  She  would 
speak  as  the  Spirit  bade  her.  .  .  .  For  the  present  her 
time  was  taken  up  with  mission  work  among  the  Wam- 
bugwe,  who  were  quite  the  worst  heathens  she  had  met 
with.  "  Not  only  terribly  depraved  —  they  eat  the 
corpses  of  their  dead ! ! !  —  but  the  dirtiest  Negroes  I 
have  ever  seen,  and  wholly  lacking  in  spirituality." 

"  Well  then,"  said  Roger,  "  there  you've  got  your 
work  cut  out,  for  several  years.  Meantime  I  will  talk 
to  our  German  friends.  .  .  ." 

"Friends,  indeed?"  said  Ann.  'They're  no 
friends  of  mine!" 

In  spite  of  her  fierceness  of  denunciation,  she  made 


382      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

both  Roger  and  Maud  as  comfortable  as  she  could  at 
her  rather  Spartan  station,  and  became  so  happy, 
friendly  and  even  tearful  during  the  evening  with 
Maud,  talking  over  the  little  world  of  Reading  and 
Basingstoke,  Aldermaston  and  Englefield,  that  evening 
prayers  for  once  were  intermitted.  Her  husband  sat 
mostly  silent,  listening  respectfully.  It  was  evident 
that  he  worked  very  hard  at  material  things  during  the 
day,  that  he  stood  much  in  awe  of  his  wife,  and  had 
completely  lost  his  gift  of  extempore  prayer.  Their 
one  daughter  was  a  thin,  sickly,  wistful  little  girl  of 
ten,  very  shy,  and  fonder  of  her  father  than  of  her 
mother.  But  according  to  Ann  she  was  already  a  good 
needlewoman,  and  helped  in  the  sewing  classes.  Kind 
Maud  proposed  she  should  be  fetched  one  day  and 
taken  to  Magara  for  a  week's  stay.  The  air  was  so 
good  there.  Ann  consented  a  little  reluctantly. 

They  rode  their  Basuto  ponies  to  see  if  there  were 
traces  of  Stolzenberg's  slaughter  of  the  flamingoes. 
But  the  bodies  had  evidently  been  carried  away  from 
the  lake  to  be  skinned  and  because  the  bones  were  valu- 
able;  and  the  sole  visible  result  of  the  raid  was  the 
absence  of  adult  birds  in  pink  plumage.  There  only 
remained  of  the  former  serried  ranks  a  thin  broken 
line  of  ugly  immature  flamingoes,  dirty-white  in  plu- 
mage, streaked  with  brown.  They  were  dibbling  tim- 
idly in  the  thick  waters  of  the  lake;  and  this  had  also 
lost  much  of  its  former  beauty  —  though  Stolzenberg 
was  not  responsible  for  the  slow  desiccation  of  East 
Africa.  The  lake  just  now  was  no  longer  a  uniform 
sheet  of  cobalt,  bordered  with  a  grey-white  fringe  of 
salt  and  guano  mixed ;  it  was  reduced  to  two  large 
areas  of  deep  water  with  grey  mud  in  between.  How 
different  from  what  Roger  had  seen  in  the  glamour  of 
1888! 

Away  from  the  lake  shore,  in  a  detour  through  the 
foot-hills,  they  met  a  few  wandering  Masai  on  their 


THE  MORALS  OF  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY     383 

way  to  trade  at  the  Mission  station.  They  greeted 
Roger  with  acclamations  of  friendship  and  much  spit- 
ting. Without  an  interpreter  he  could  not  understand 
them,  but  they  kept  pointing  to  the  north-west  and  evi- 
dently referring  to  the  wicked  Stolzenberg  under  their 
name  of  Olcduria  ("  The  Terror  ")  ;  and  at  the  same 
time  to  "  God  " — Engai.  They  talked  with  the  satis- 
fied tone  of  a  thing  now  settled,  and  went  on  their  way 
to  interview  the  Woman-chief  who  was  their  medical 
adviser,  and  would-be  converter. 

'  They  may  have  heard  of  Ann's  letter,"  said  Roger, 
"  and  believe  her  curse  is  coming  off.  Do  you  see 
where  they  were  pointing?  .  .  .  That  curious  cloud 
that  seems  to  be  rising  high  in  the  air,  rising  and  fall- 
ing, as  though  one  of  the  craters  were  showing  signs  of 
activity?  " 

As  soon  as  he  returned  to  Magara,  Roger  drew  up  a 
formal  complaint  against  Stolzenberg,  addressed  to  the 
officer  commanding  in  Irangi.  He  set  forth  the  long 
tale  of  misdeeds  on  the  part  of  "  The  Terror  "  during 
the  past  ten  years  and  urged  the  German  authority  for 
the  good  name  of  the  Empire  to  arrest  and  try  this 
bandit.  If  this  were  not  done,  he  would  be  compelled 
to  place  all  the  facts  before  the  German  directors  of 
the  Concessionaire  Company  whose  employes'  people 
and  property  suffered  so  much  from  Stolzenberg's  raids 
and  violence.  The  maiming  of  the  Masai  messenger 
was  a  concrete  case,  whatever  might  be  thought  of  the 
offence  in  slaughtering  the  flamingoes,  birds  whose 
guano  was  one  of  the  Concession's  assets. 

A  fortnight  later  a  military  force  of  one  hundred 
Askari  and  two  twelve-pounder  mountain  guns  arrived 
at  Wilhelmshohe  —  as  the  entire  scattered  settlement 
of  the  Concession  in  the  Iraku  Hills  was  called  (at  the 
request  of  the  Schraders:  the  Stotts  never  got  nearer 
the  pronunciation  than  "  Williamshoe  ").  The  force 


384     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

was  commanded  by  two  smart-looking  German  lieu- 
tenants and  a  white  Feldvvebel.  The  lieutenants,  who 
saluted  Brentham  as  Herr  Major,  said  they  were  to  act 
under  his  orders.  He  was  commissioned  as  a  magis- 
trate to  proceed  to  the  Red  Crater  and  arrest  Adolf 
Stolzenberg,  but  not  supposed  to  take  any  part  in  the 
fighting,  if  force  was  to  be  used.  That  was  their 
business.  The  Herr  Oberst  who  had  sent  them  re- 
membered that  Major  Brentham  had  been  wounded  in 
the  South  African  War,  and  hoped  he  would  take  care 
of  himself;  if  his  health  was  not  equal  to  the  journey, 
then  the  nearest  German  district  commissioner  would 
go  instead.  But  Roger,  in  spite  of  his  wife's  plead- 
ings and  Maud's  warnings,  was  keen  to  see  the  thing 
through.  Besides,  he  could  serve  as  guide.  So  in 
course  of  time  the  expedition  found  itself  drawn  up 
on  the  grassy  plateau  and  facing  the  heavy  \vooden 
door  and  stone  wall.  A  summons  to  open  in  the  name 
of  the  law  was  shouted  by  the  Feldwebel,  who  had 
an  immense  voice.  There  was  no  response.  Then  the 
guns,  put  into  position,  came  into  play  and  shattered 
the  door  to  fragments.  One  of  the  lieutenants  and 
half  the  force  marched  in.  ...  Half  an  hour  elapsed. 
.  .  .  Then  the  lieutenant  reappeared  with  rather  a 
scared  face. 

"  We  can  only  suppose  either  that  Stolzenberg  fled 
some  time  ago,  or  that  his  settlement  has  simply  been 
engulfed  by  some  appalling  volcanic  action.  Come  in 
and  see !  " 

Roger  and  the  rest  of  the  force  followed.  Inside  the 
Red  Crater,  which  enclosed  a  space  about  a  mile  in 
diameter,  very  little  could  at  first  be  seen  but  clouds  of 
sulphurous  vapours,  which  when  wafted  in  their  direc- 
tion nearly  stifled  them;  and  clouds  of  steam  where  the 
little  stream  from  the  hidden  pool  at  the  further  end 
of  the  crater  fell  into  some  gulf  of  heat  - 

They  advanced  cautiously;  the  wind  took  a  different 


THE  MORALS  OF  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY      385 

turn,  and  at  last  the  rashest  pioneers  among  them  dis- 
cerned the  ground  falling  away  abruptly  over  a  sharp- 
cut  edge  into  Hell  —  as  a  Dante  might  have  deemed  it. 
The  sulphurous  fumes  drove  them  back.  The  inevi- 
table conclusion  —  confirmed  in  time  —  was  that  the 
crater  had  reopened  immediately  beneath  Stolzenberg's 
settlement.  Houses,  people,  cattle  had  all  been  plunged 
into  the  bowels  of  the  earth,  hundreds  of  feet  below  to 
a  fiery  furnace.  Those  humans  and  cattle  who  were 
nearer  the  crater  walls  at  the  time  had  possibly  been 
choked  and  killed  by  the  gases.  Indeed,  on  their  way 
out,  they  saw  here  and  there,  at  the  bases  of  the  red 
walls,  dead  cattle  lying  stiff,  all  four  legs  in  the  air. 
Evidently,  inquisitive  Masai,  after  the  earthquake,  had 
climbed  the  crater-rim  from  the  outside  and  seen 
enough  to  guess  that  the  white  Woman-chief's  curse 
had  come  home,  and  the  great  enemy  of  the  Masai  and 
his  murderous  band  of  raiders  had  gone  suddenly  to 
an  awful  doom. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

EIGHT    YEARS    HAVE    PASSED   BY 

EIGHT  years  have  passed  since  Roger  Brentham 
staggered,  half  stupefied  with  sulphur  fumes,  from 
the  Red  Crater;  satisfied  with  a  great  sense  of  relief 
and  no  pity,  that  Stolzenberg  and  his  raiding  Ruga- 
ruga  had  come  to  a  deserved  end. 

"  The  Terror "  having  been  wiped  out  in  a  way 
which  brought  an  enormous  accession  of  prestige  to 
Mrs.  Anderson  of  the  Ewart-Stott  Industrial  Mission, 
the  Happy  Valley  Concession  was  relieved  for  a  time 
of  any  active  enemy.  Willowby  Patterne,  who  had 
again  taken  up  his  abode  on  his  Namanga  property 
(after  having  once  more  passed  through  the  Divorce 
Court  —  this  time  at  the  instance  of  a  deluded  but  de- 
termined American  wife),  may  have  been  disposed  to 
fish  in  waters  of  his  own  troubling,  have  itched  to 
share  in  the  immense  wealth  now  pouring  out  from  the 
region  where  Roger  had  forestalled  him.  But  mean- 
time he  had  been  a  little  sobered  by  Stolzenberg's  tragic 
end.  So  he  devoted  himself  for  these  eight  years  to 
shooting  enormous  quantities  of  big-game  on  the 
scarcely  inhabited  tracts  of  northern  German  East  Af- 
rica. The  Germans  remonstrated  with  him  at  times 
for  his  breaches  of  their  perfunctory  Game  Regula- 
tions ;  but  an  equal  disregard  for  these  attempts  to  save 
the  fauna  was  shown  by  German  hunters.  Willowby 
imported  and  exported  most  of  his  goods  and  supplies, 
all  his  hides  and  ivory  by  German  railway  routes,  sent 
them  to  be  sold  in  German  markets,  and  took  care  to 
be  on  good  terms  with  German  frontier  officials.  So 
his  baleful  activities  were  not  materially  interfered  with. 

386 


EIGHT  YEARS  HAVE  PASSED  BY        387 

On  the  British  side  of  the  frontier  he  was  also  re- 
garded with  lenience  for  reasons  not  specified.  He 
was  popular  among  the  East  African  planters  because 
he  kept  the  native  in  his  proper  place  and  evaded  the 
"  silly "  restrictions  on  unlimited  "  sport."  Apart 
from  his  matrimonial  affairs,  which  were  a  source  of 
recurrent,  rather  piquant  scandal,  he  was  not  without 
a  certain  prestige  in  England.  He  had  made  his  ranch- 
ing property  pay  considerable  profits  out  of  the  chase 
and  cattle-breeding,  and  had  thus  pacified  his  most 
pressing  creditors.  He  earned  other  large  sums  by 
acting,  for  three  months  in  the  dry  season,  as  guide  and 
arranger  of  big-game  "  shoots "  to  excessively  rich 
Americans  who  wanted  the  thrill  of  firing  into  the 
brown  of  dense  herds  of  antelope  and  zebra,  getting 
perchance  a  maned  lion  without  too  much  danger,  or 
similarly  bringing  down  an  elephant  of  medium  size 
(they  would  buy  tusks  "  to  go  with  it  "  from  Patterne's 
store),  or  a  record  rhino  (Patterne  supplied  the  "  rec- 
ord "  horn;  the  poor  specimen  killed  by  the  millionaire 
was  given  to  the  Andorobo  trackers  to  eat). 

Having  accidentally  brought  to  light  several  new  va- 
rieties or  sub-species  of  antelope  among  the  thousands 
he  shot  for  their  hides  and  horns,  he  was  deemed  a 
great  "  naturalist  "  in  the  Cromwell  Road  Museum ; 
and  Roger's  anger  whenever  his  name  was  mentioned 
—  calling  up  as  it  did  many  a  mental  picture  of  lifeless 
wastes  of  prairie  strewn  with  bone-heaps  where  once 
rioted  a  wonderful  and  harmless  Zoological  gardens  — 
was  put  down  to  jealousy  of  Patterne's  marksman- 
ship. 

Twice  in  these  eight  years  Roger  had  been  to  Eng- 
land. In  1902  he  had  escorted  his  wife  and  sister 
home,  and  stayed  there  six  months  to  make  his  chil- 
dren's acquaintance.  In  1906  he  and  Maud,  who  kept 
house  for  him  at  Magara  in  Lucy's  absence,  again  re- 
turned for  a  long  holiday;  and  in  the  following  year 


388     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

brought  Lucy  back  with  them  for  a  last  stay  in  the 
Happy  Valley  —  a  last  stay,  because  Roger  calculated 
on  retiring  from  the  management  of  the  Concession  in 
1909.  He  would  then  sell  out  his  shares,  and  on  the 
proceeds  would  be  wealthy  enough  to  leave  Africa  to 
younger  men  and  devote  himself  to  home  politics.  No 
more,  after  1909,  would  Lucy  be  torn  in  two  in  her 
affections,  longing  to  be  by  her  husband,  pining  in  fact 
without  him;  yet  miserable  at  the  idea  of  her  children 
growing  up  outside  her  care  and  supervision. 

John,  as  it  was,  showed  himself  devoted  to  the 
splendiferous  and  dazzling  "  Aunt  Sibyl  " ;  and  even 
Fat  Maud  (no  longer  a  dumpling,  but  still  distin- 
guished by  this  adjective  from  the  other  Maud,  thirty- 
five  years  older,  and  spare  of  build)  .  .  .  even  Fat 
Maud  preferred  Englefield  as  a  home  to  the  humbler 
Church  Farm  at  Aldermaston ;  and  adopted  a  rather 
patronizing  tone  towards  the  quiet,  pale-faced,  languid, 
timid  mother  who  had  rusticated  so  many  years  in  the 
wilds  of  Africa  that  she  was  ignorant  of  free-wheel 
bicycles,  motor-cars,  gramophones,  two-step  dances, 
ping-pong,  hockey,  and  diabolo. 

During  these  eight  years  Mrs.  Bazzard's  persistent 
letters  to  Sir  Bennet  Molyneux  had  their  reward.  Her 
Spencer  was  removed  from  malarial,  out-of -the- world 
East  Africa  and  made  Consul-General  at  Halicar- 
nassus,  to  preside  with  judicial  functions  over  a  Con- 
sular Court  in  Asia  Minor,  on  £900  a  year  and  allow- 
ances. Mrs.  Bazzard  foresaw  for  herself  a  glorious 
early  autumn  to  her  life,  as  a  leading  lady  in  the  Le- 
vant, with  an  occasional  dress  from  Paris,  a  promi- 
nence in  Levantine  Society,  a  possible  visit  of  the 
Royal  yacht  to  this  old-world  Turkish  harbour  where 
Herodotos  once  lived  and  wrote;  and  inevitably  a 
knighthood  on  retirement  for  the  re-animated  doll,  the 
Spencer  into  whom  she  had  really  infused  new  stuffing. 


EIGHT  YEARS  HAVE  PASSED  BY        389 

"  Oh,  that  dearest  Mother  might  live  " —  in  Bayswater, 
it  would  not  do  to  have  her  at  Halicarnassus  — "  to 
refer  to  her  daughter  as  '  Lady  Bazzard  ' !  " 

She  has  long  ceased  to  take  much  interest  in  the 
Brenthams,  once  Roger  Brentham  —  with  whom  she 
believes  herself  to  have  had  a  serious  and  compromis- 
ing flirtation  in  1887,  and  sometimes  hints  as  much  to 
her  Spencer  when  his  interest  in  her  flags  —  no  longer 
has  his  name  in  lists  of  officials  likely  to  get  between 
Spencer  and  a  Mediterranean  post.  She  is,  however,  a 
little  annoyed  from  time  to  time  to  see  he  is  not  socially 
dead  .  .  .  that  highly  placed  officials  actually  notice 
him.  For  instance,  the  Bazzards  when  at  home  in 
1902  could  not  obtain,  try  they  ever  so  hard,  a  place 
in  the  Abbey  to  see  King  Edward  crowned.  But 
Roger  saw  the  ceremony  from  a  modest  nook  inside 
the  nave ;  saw  Sibyl  in  ermine  and  crimson  velvet  and 
ostrich  plumes,  nodding  right  and  left  to  acquaintances 
and  wreathed  in  smiles,  pass  before  him  with  other 
peers  and  peeresses  to  her  appointed  place;  and  prob- 
ably owed  his  seat  to  the  intervention  of  the  African 
Department  of  the  Foreign  Office,  or  to  a  request  from 
the  President  of  the  Royal  Geographical  Society,  as 
the  recognition  due  to  a  distinguished  explorer. 

He  had  forgotten  by  now  any  rancour  he  might  have 
retained  for  the  Foreign  Office,  and  would  drop  in  at 
the  African  Department  from  time  to  time  for  a  chat 
with  "  Rosy  "  Walrond  —  who  was  proposing  to  go  to 
Unguja  to  tighten  things  up,  and  intended  to  come  and 
stay  with  him  in  the  Happy  Valley  and  see  with  his 
own  incredulous  eyes  the  Red  Crater  and  its  bottom- 
less pit,  and  the  lovely  maidens  of  Iraku  who  were  the 
cause  of  Mrs.  Anderson's  heartbreak.  Or  with  Ted 
Parsons  —  about  to  be  named  Consul-General  at  Na- 
ples ;  or  kind  old  Snarley  Yow,  who  said  he  wished  now 
he  had  done  like  Roger:  chucked  the  F.O.  and  a  pos- 
sible, :,°nsion  of  £700  a  year  and  gone  in  for  an  Afri- 


390     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

can  Concession  like  the  Happy  Valley  —  suit  him  down 
to  the  ground. 

The  remarkable  success  of  the  Happy  Valley  —  the 
one  bright  spot  in  "  German  East,"  where  there  was 
never  a  native  rising  and  whence  came  a  regular  out- 
put of  minerals,  precious  metals,  precious  stones ;  cof- 
fee, fibre,  rubber,  cotton,  tanning-bark,  hides,  poultry 
and  potatoes;  the  steady  standing  of  its  pound  shares 
at  forty  marks  on  the  German  exchanges,  and  the 
purring  approval  of  the  Schraders:  caused  Roger  to 
be  increasingly  consulted  in  British  Colonial  circles 
outside  the  Colonial  Office.  Diplomatists  took  an  in- 
terest in  him,  and  adjusted  their  monocles  at  parties  to 
see  him  better.  The  Foreign  Office  published  as  a 
White  Paper  a  Report  drawn  up  at  their  request  on  the 
Big  Game  of  East  Africa  and  its  international  impor- 
tance. Was  he  to  be  a  means  of  solving  the  nascent 
Anglo-German  rivalry  by  suggesting  a  combination  of 
effort  in  Colonization?  The  Schraders  hoped  so. 

Mrs.  Bazzard  was  really  vexed  to  see  one  day  in  the 
weekly  edition  of  the  Times  that  on  March  25,  1903, 
Major  Roger  Brentham,  D.S.O.,  together  with  other 
guests  whose  names  meant  nothing  to  her,  dined  with 
Lady  Silchester  to  meet  the  Right  Honble.  Josiah 
Choselwhit,  etc.,  etc. 

Sibyl  at  this  time  still  believed  Chocho  to  be  the 
coming  man,  the  Premier  who  would  set  the  British 
Empire  right,  bring  about  an  Imperial  Customs  Union 
and  a  Federation  directed  from  London,  and  calm  de- 
fiance to  the  rest  of  the  world.  She  was  one  of  the 
earliest  of  the  B.M.G.'s.1  Roger  was  of  the  opposite 
school,  a  school  which  at  best  achieves  a  cool  popu- 
larity amongst  thinkers.  He  wanted  to  bring  about  a 
moral  union,  so  to  speak,  between  the  British  Empire, 
Germany  and  the  United  States,  a  pooling  of  their  re- 
sources ;  and  Universal  peace :  to  ensure  which  France 
1  Fide  the  columns  of  the  contemporary  Morning  Post. 


EIGHT  YEARS  HAVE  PASSED  BY        391 

should  be  retroceded  a  portion  of  Alsace-Lorraine,  and 
Germany  allowed  to  grow  into  a  great  African  Power. 
There  were  many  faults  in  the  German  conception  of 
how  Negro  Africa  should  be  administered;  but  the 
same  faults  were  to  be  seen  in  British  Africa;  the  same 
reforms  would  apply  to  both  regimes. 

But  Brentham,  though  he  had  distinguished  himself 
in  the  fight  with  the  Boers  for  the  overlordship  of 
South  Africa,  had  disapproved  of  the  policy  of  the 
Raid  and  had  said  so,  and  written  caustically  on  the 
subject.  His  views  in  some  other  directions,  espe- 
cially on  Free  Trade  with  Africa,  were  diametrically 
opposed  to  those  of  the  Idol  of  the  Midlands;  so  that 
Sibyl's  attempt  to  bring  them  together  at  her  board  in 
the  hope  that  the  Colonial  Office  might  give  scope  to 
her  cousin's  abilities,  was  frustrated  at  the  very  start. 
Chocho  said  very  little  to  Roger,  and  Roger,  being 
anything  but  a  self-pusher,  said  very  little  to  Chocho. 

During  these  eight  years  Lucy's  father,  approaching 
and  passing  the  age  of  seventy,  continued  to  farm  at 
Aldermaston  with  vigour  and  geniality  and  less  and 
less  conservatism.  Lucy's  mother  was  hale  and  hearty, 
with  apple-red  cheeks,  and  placidly  thankful  to  the 
Lord  who  had  arranged  all  the  affairs  of  her  family  so 
well  —  never  mind  what  happened  to  other  families: 
perhaps  it  was  their  fault.  Lucy's  sister  Clara,  who 
had  married  Marden  the  Cricketer,  was  amassing  year 
by  year  an  enormous  family  of  alternate  boys  and 
girls,  and,  as  Sibyl  said,  it  would  be  interesting  to  en- 
courage her  to  go  on  till  she  had  passed  the  normal, 
and  then  exhibit  her  with  her  progeny  at  a  County 
Show.  Her  husband  proved  an  assistant  Agent  for 
the  Silchester  estate  of  progressively  increasing  worth, 
and  let  cricket  go  to  the  wall  —  or  to  Australia.  His 
boss,  the  Head  Agent,  Maurice  Brentham,  lived  much 
in  London  and  in  Staffordshire,  supervising  the  affairs 
of  the  estate  in  those  directions;  and  managing  them 


392      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

so  well  that  when  young  Silchester  came  of  age  he 
would  be  among  the  wealthiest  of  our  peers  and  able 
to  write  and  produce  mystic  operas  —  if  he  so  willed  — 
or  subsidize  a  whole  Russian  ballet  —  without  feeling 
the  cost.  Maurice  had  never  married.  His  excuse 
was  the  prolificness  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Marden,  the  suf- 
ficiency of  Roger's  family,  and  the  seven  children  (al- 
ready) of  his  brother  Captain  Geoffrey  Brentham,  R.N. 
Geoffrey  was  a  great  begetter:  almost  like  some  hero 
of  the  Greek  classics.  He  apparently  only  spent  one 
month  at  home  in  every  fifteen;  yet  his  wife  did  little 
more  —  especially  during  these  eight  years  —  than 
lie-in,  nurse,  short-coat  and  wean  one  child ;  conceive, 
lie-in,  nurse  and  short-coat  another.  Meantime  her 
husband  took  enormous  pains  over  naval  marksman- 
ship, and  agitated  himself  over  the  quarrels  of  the 
Admirals.  Mrs.  Geoffrey  was  the  daughter  of  a  Naval 
Chaplain  with  very  pronounced  views  on  family  prayer 
and  the  uncriticizable  nature  of  the  Bible ;  and  on  quite 
illusory  grounds  she  decided  that  Roger  and  his  mis- 
sionary wife,  Maud,  Sibyl  —  who,  she  was  sure,  was 
the  real  cause  of  Maurice  not  marrying  —  were  all 
rather  wicked  and  not  worth  knowing :  so,  fortunately, 
she  absolves  me  from  any  concern  in  her  affairs. 

Similarly  I  can  dispose  of  Sibyl's  father  by  saying 
that  he  died  from  a  wandering  clot  in  1905,  and  that 
Sibyl  only  showed  perfunctory  regret:  he  had  become 
a  bore  of  the  first  water,  obsessed  by  the  belief  that  if 
only  he  had  had  capital  behind  him,  his  ideas  about 
farming  would  have  revolutionized  British  agriculture. 
Sibyl's  mother,  unwavering  in  her  attachment  to  her 
spouse,  whom  she  only  remembered  as  the  handsome 
young  captain  fresh  from  gallant  service  in  suppressing 
the  Indian  Mutiny,  who  had  won  her  affections  in  1859, 
died  also,  soon  after  her  husband,  probably  from  some 
form  of  cancer.  Aunt  Christabel  —  the  ITonblc.  Mrs. 
Jenkyns  in  private  life  —  also  died  within  this  period, 


EIGHT  YEARS  HAVE  PASSED  BY        393 

somewhere  in  lodgings  —  Bath  ?  Both  deaths  oc- 
curred at  awkward  junctures  when  big  political  parties 
had  to  be  put  off  at  a  moment's  notice;  and  therefore 
wrung  from  Sibyl  not  only  a  few  tears  of  sorrow  and 
remorse  —  Had  she  been  quite  kind  to  either?  Would 
she,  too,  live  to  be  old,  boring,  unlovely,  and  conse- 
quently unloved?  —  but  also  exclamations  of  annoy- 
ance at  people  who  chose  the  supreme  moments  of  the 
season,  when  Royalty  was  once  again  showing  an  inter- 
est in  you,  to  take  to  their  beds  and  die. 

Old  Mr.  Baines,  the  proprietor  of  the  Aerated  Bev- 
erages Manufactory  at  Tilehurst,  died  of  diabetes  in 
1906.  He  left  his  money  —  a  few  thousand  pounds  — 
on  trust  to  John,  the  eldest  son  of  Captain  and  Mrs. 
Roger  Brentham,  subject  to  a  life  interest  for  Mrs. 
Baines.  His  spouse  had  led  him  a  life,  as  he  ex- 
pressed it,  since  her  son's  death  in  1888.  She  had 
passed  from  the  most  narrow-minded  piety  to  a  raging 
disbelief  in  all  churches,  sects,  and  creeds.  The 
"  raging  "  was  chiefly  inward  or  expressed  through  her 
pen  in  "  open  "  letters  to  clergymen,  philanthropists,  or 
scandalized  county  journals.  Otherwise  she  main- 
tained a  Trappist  silence,  neglected  the  house-keeping, 
injured  the  business  by  scaring  away  customers.  At 
length  in  1901  she  took  to  denying  in  a  loud  voice,  at 
Reading  markets  and  other  assemblages  of  crowds  (as 
in  her  letters  to  the  Berks  Observer  and  the  Newbury 
Times},  the  very  existence  of  a  God;  and  then  public 
opinion  obliged  her  husband  to  have  her  put  away  into 
an  asylum. 

Curiously  enough  she  offered  little  opposition  to  this 
measure.  She  asked  for,  and  was  allowed,  a  large 
quantity  of  books,  and  became  with  the  aid  of  new  spec- 
tacles an  omnivorous  reader.  She  gave -little  trouble. 
;Her  husband  made  a  liberal  payment  to  the  asylum,  but 
as  this  ceased  at  his  death,  and  the  Trustees  showed  a 
mean  desire  for  economy,  it  occurred  to  the  medical 


394     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

man  in  charge  —  not  without  a  conscience  —  to  re- 
examine  Mrs.  Baines  and  see  if  she  really  was  mad. 
As  a  result  he  pronounced  her  restored  to  sanity.  She 
made  no  comment  on  her  release,  faithful  to  her  vow 
of  silence,  but  with  the  help  of  her  trustees  she  pur- 
chased a  small  cottage  on  the  Bath  Road  near  Theale. 
The  sight  of  the  enormous  motor  traffic  and  the  bicycle 
accidents  seemed  to  amuse  her.  Roger,  during  his 
1906-7  holiday  in  England,  at  Lucy's  wish  went  to  see 
her,  to  be  satisfied  she  was  properly  cared  for.  She 
received  him  in  grim  silence,  offered  a  Windsor  chair, 
and  listened  taciturnly  to  his  stammering,  apologetic 
inquiries.  When  he  stopped  speaking  she  drew  blot- 
ter, pen,  and  ink  towards  her,  and  wrote  in  a  bold  hand 
on  a  sheet  of  notepaper :  "  The  British  people  are  not 
the  Ten  Lost  Tribes  of  Israel;  more  fools  they,  if  they 
were.  I  agree  with  you  about  Religion.  I  forgive 
Lucy.  I  am  glad  little  John  is  to  have  my  money  when 
I  die,  but  I  shall  live  as  long  as  I  can  to  find  out  the 
Truth.  Don't  come  any  more." 

She  then  conducted  him  to  the  door  —  it  was  in  the 
shocking  summer  of  1907  —  pointed  to  the  grey  sky  of 
a  cold,  dripping  July  and  to  the  ruined  hay  crops  in  an 
adjacent  field,  to  the  green  corn  beaten  to  the  earth 
and  to  a  collision  between  a  motor  cyclist  and  a  push- 
bike  on  the  Bath  Road.  Then  her  long,  furrowed  lips 
curved  into  an  awful  smile  —  a  smile  perhaps  her  dead 
son  had  never  seen  —  her  angry  eyes  and  her  crooked, 
uplifted  finger  expressed  a  derisive  query  as  to  the 
existence  of  any  Providential  concern  for  the  welfare 
of  Man. 

Therewith  she  returned  to  her  books  and  the  studies 
she  had  taken  up  so  late  in  life.  Possibly  she  is  living 
still  at  eighty-two. 

During  these  eight  years,  Lucy's  health,  after  some 
fluctuations,  had  decidedly  improved;  and  when  her 
husband  was  preparing  to  return  in  the  autumn  of 


EIGHT  YEARS  HAVE  PASSED  BY        395 

1907  for  his  final  round-up  of  the  Happy  Valley  Con- 
cession, she  insisted  on  accompanying  him.  It  would 
be  for  less  than  two  years;  Maud  was  coming  too; 
and  the  children  would  be  most  of  their  time  at  school. 
Rather  with  misgivings  Roger  agreed.  Provided  she 
kept  her  health,  it  would  indeed  be  a  delightful  con- 
clusion to  the  great  adventure  of  their  lives.  They 
would  revel  for  the  last  time  in  the  beauty  of  Iraku 
and  the  Happy  Valley,  their  Crowned  cranes  and  pea- 
fowl, their  tame  gazelles  and  duikers,  their  quaint 
menagerie  of  monkeys;  their  wonderful  flower  garden 
—  Iraku  grew  everything :  orchids  and  mignonette, 
roses  and  lilies,  petunias  and  pelargoniums,  Strelitzia 
rcginae  and  Disa  uniftora.  ...  He  would  wind  up  his 
financial  connexion  with  the  Concession  and  retire  from 
it  a  rich  man,  perhaps  retaining  a  sleeping  partnership 
in  its  concerns:  for  it  was  entangled  with  his  heart- 
strings. 

Then,  all  clear  for  Europe,  after  a  cycle  of  Cathay. 
They  would  motor  from  Iraku  to  the  nearest  railway 
station  on  one  or  other  of  the  lines  that  now  penetrated 
the  interior,  secure  the  best  cabins  on  the  luxurious 
steamers  of  the  D.O.A.  line,  and  thus  retrace  the  route 
of  their  first  voyage,  when  love  was  incipient,  but  when 
their  future  seemed  dark  and  uncertain.  They  would 
be  lovers  again  on  this  voyage,  but  this  time  open  and 
unashamed,  and  Maud  should  pretend  to  play  the  part 
of  a  green-eyed  Mrs.  Bazzard. 

The  first  portion  of  this  pleasant  programme  was 
fulfilled.  For  a  year  Roger  rode  from  factory  to  mine, 
from  coffee  plantation  to  the  fields  and  sheds  where 
pineapples  were  grown,  cut,  and  canned.  He  made 
good  suggestions  about  their  cattle,  about  war,  unceas- 
ing war  on  the  tse-tse  fly,  which  —  it  was  feared  — 
was  entering  the  Valley.  He  viewed  with  satisfaction 
his  success  over  the  crossing  of  Maskat  donkey  and 
Basuto  pony  mares  with  zebra  stallions,  and  considered 


396     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

it  proved  that  the  resulting  mules  might  become  a  valu- 
able factor  in  East  African  transport.  He  inspected 
the  new  ostrich  farms,  the  new  smelting  works  and  the 
primitive  ceramics  where  native  women  turned  out 
excellent  pottery  for  home  use.  He  decided  that  fur- 
ther explorations  for  gold  should  be  undertaken  in 
Ilamba,  and  that  a  fresh  reef  should  be  opened  up  in 
western  Iraku.  They  would  waste  no  more  money 
looking  for  the  matrix  of  the  diamonds  —  diamonds 
might  go  hang,  there  were  plenty  of  them  in  German 
South- West  Africa. 

But  this  wolframite  with  its  product  tungsten :  that 
was  worth  following  up  with  persistence.  It  was  more 
and  more  needed  for  the  application  of  electricity  and 
for  the  latest  developments  of  metallurgy,  and  would 
alone  make  the  Concession  of  great  monetary  value. 

At  the  beginning  of  1909  a  cloud  came  over  their 
happiness,  contentment,  and  sense  of  security  in  the 
future.  In  the  first  place  the  Austrian  annexation  of 
Bosnia  and  its  accompanying  defiance  of  Russia  by  the 
shining-armoured  Kaiser  had  inspired  British  states- 
men with  hand-in-the-breast-of-the-f rock-coat  speeches 
of  the  Pecksnirfian  brand;  the  harder  to  bear  since  we 
were  engaged  about  that  time  in  pushing  Turkey  out 
of  Arabia  and  manipulating  the  partition  of  Persia. 
This,  once  again,  soured  the  relations  between  English- 
men and  Germans.  Then,  the  value  of  the  Happy  Val- 
ley Concession,  insisted  on  by  Roger  in  his  despatches 
to  the  Directorate  in  Leipzig,  had  reached  the  compre- 
hension of  the  All-Highest  and  of  the  Imperial  Cabinet. 
To  these  august  personages  it  seemed  incongruous  and 
detrimental  to  German  all-self-sufficiency  that  such  an 
important  portion  of  Germany's  most  important  colony 
should  be  managed  by  an  Englishman,  and  that  an  Eng- 
lish Industrial  Mission  should  contain  a  female  of  such 
measureless  audacity  as  a  certain  "  Ann  Anderson  " 
who  had  dared  to  write  a  letter  to  the  All-Highest,  com- 


EIGHT  YEARS  HAVE  PASSED  BY        397 

plaining  of  sexual  licence  on  the  part  of  Germans  in 
East  Africa.  Let  there  be  an  end  of  this!  The  Eng- 
lishman must  go,  the  Industrial  Mission  must  be  re- 
placed by  some  subservient  Roman  Catholic  teaching 
fraternity  from  the  Rhineland,  which  would  attend  to 
its  prescribed  functions  of  instructing  the  Negroes  how 
to  use  their  hands  and  in  a  limited  degree  their  brains, 
and  call  nothing  German  in  question,  least  of  all  the 
policy  approved  by  the  Kaiser's  Kolonialminister.  As 
to  the  Schraders :  they  meant  well :  they  had  tried  to 
ride  the  German  and  the  English  horses  abreast:  a 
clever  circus  trick,  but  one  that  no  longer  consorted 
writh  Imperial  aims.  They  were  worthy  financiers,  but 
they  had  become  too  international,  with  their  offices  in 
Paris,  London,  and  Johannesburg,  as  well  as  in  Leipzig 
and  Berlin.  .  .  . 

These  august  decisions  had  to  be  conveyed  to  Roger 
by  the  greatly  disappointed  Schraders,  who  had  sought 
so  perseveringly  to  co-ordinate  the  enterprise  of  the 
British  Empire  with  that  of  Germany  and  France  — 
internationalists  before  the  proper  time.  They  knew, 
of  course,  that  Major  Brentham  purposed  resigning 
his  local  Direction  of  the  Concession  in  1909,  but  they 
had  half  hoped  he  might  have  continued  in  Europe 
much  the  same  function  as  a  member  of  the  Board. 
As  it  was,  they  had  to  ask  him  to  go,  instead  of  acqui- 
escing reluctantly  in  his  departure.  And  quite  decid- 
edly they  had  to  request  that  all  relations  between  the 
Concession  and  the  Stott  Mission  be  severed. 

From  the  Imperial  authority  in  East  Africa  the 
Ewart  Stotts  received  the  curt  order  to  wind  up  the 
affairs  of  their  mission  and  hand  over  their  buildings 
and  plantations  to  the  Brotherhood  of  the  Heiliger 
Jesu  of  Bingen-am-Rhein.  They  would  be  paid  com- 
pensation for  the  actual  outlay  of  their  own  moneys, 
and  their  teachers  and  subordinates  would  be  granted 
the  equivalent  of  a  year's  salary,  at  existing  rates. 


398     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

This  not-to-be-appealed-against  edict  caused  the 
Stotts  the  a-cutest  sorrow  and  dismay;  and  Ann  An- 
derson the  most  unbridled  anger.  Roger,  however, 
counselled  resignation  and  moderation  of  utterance. 
Let  them  take  the  compensation,  get  all  they  could 
out  of  the  Imperial  authorities,  and  migrate  to  neigh- 
bouring British  territories,  if  they  were  still  keen  on 
Mission  work. 

"  After  all,"  he  said,  "  I  am  going  too,  and  you  must 
feel,  even  if  Hildebrandt  is  to  succeed  me,  it  would  be 
difficult  for  you  to  remain  here  without  my  backing. 
Hildebrandt  —  and  you  all  say  you  like  his  wife  and 
that  she  is  in  sympathy  with  you  —  promises  me  that 
if  he  does  succeed  as  Manager,  he  will  do  all  he  can  for 
the  natives  and  endeavour  to  get  your  policy  continued 
by  the  Catholic  teachers.  .  .  .  Go  home  and  have  a 
good  rest.  Go  to  England  and  take  stock  of  what  peo- 
ple are  saying  and  doing.  Get  Ann  to  take  lodgings 
for  you  somewhere  in  Berkshire  .  .  .  see  the  best  of 
England.  .  .  .  Then,  if  you  decide  to  come  back  to 
East  Africa  you  could  start  another  Industrial  Mission 
on  British  territory  among  the  Masai  and  the  Nandi 
who  would  seem  much  the  same  as  the  people  you  are 
now  leaving.  .  .  ." 

Ann,  however,  made  her  departure  sensational. 
After  handing  over  the  keys  of  Mwada  Station  to  the 
Catholic  Mission  she  marched  out  to  the  centre  of  the 
market-place,  on  a  hillock  overlooking  the  lake;  and 
in  the  presence  of  a  large  crowd  of  Masai  and  Wam- 
bugwe  she  solemnly  cursed  the  Kaiser  in  Masai,  Kim- 
bugwe  and  English.  It  took  more  than  nine  years  for 
the  curse  in  full  measure  to  take  effect;  but  then  the 
Kaiser  was  a  much  more  important  personage  in  the 
history  of  Africa  than  the  occupant  of  the  Red  Crater, 
and  the  Devil  no  doubt  fought  far  harder  to  save  him. 

In  the  spring  of  1909  Lucy  was  again  attacked  by 


EIGHT  YEARS  HAVE  PASSED  BY        399 

pernicious  anaemia,  and  Dr.  Wiese's  remedies  failed 
this  time  to  arrest  its  encroachments.  "  There  is  only 
one  thing,"  he  said,  melancholy  with  foreboding  at  the 
departure  of  his  English  friends  — "  only  one  thing  to 
save  Mrs.  Brentham  from  dying,  and  that  is  to  send 
her  quickly  out  of  Africa  on  to  a  home-going  steamer. 
The  sea  air  may  stimulate  the  recovery  of  the  blood 
and  help  her  to  regain  strength." 

Roger  therefore  hurried  through  his  preparations 
for  handing  over  his  work  to  Hildebrandt.  It  was 
thought  better  that  with  them  should  go  the  two  Aus- 
tralians, so  that  the  staff  might  be  entirely  German. 
Maud  superintended  the  packing  of  their  personal  ef- 
fects. Roger  decided,  partly  out  of  liking  for  the 
Hildebrandts,  partly  from  a  horror  he  had  of  stripping 
the  home  where  he  and  Lucy  and  Maud  had  been  so 
happy,  to  present  the  Hildebrandts  with  its  furniture 
and  garnishings,  and  to  take  away  as  little  luggage  as 
possible.  He  did  this  almost  with  a  kind  of  foreseeing 
that  he  might  some  day  return.  Maud  felt  very  much 
parting  with  the  Crowned  cranes.  Together  with  pea- 
fowl they  are  the  most  intelligent,  inquisitive,  well- 
mannered  pets  that  the  bird-world  can  produce. 

The  journey  to  the  coast  port  where  the  steamer 
would  call  was  accomplished  in  a  motor  ride  of  three 
days.  Even  to  the  dying  and  little-regarding  Lucy  this 
was  in  striking  contrast  to  the  three-weeks'  to  four- 
weeks'  journey  up-country  in  her  novitiate;  with  its 
crushing  fatigues,  discomforts  and  frequent  dangers. 
No  more  skulls  and  skeletons  of  recent  raids,  no  more 
intrusive  lions,  no  need  to  fall  among  soldier  ants,  no 
water  famines  and  atrocious  smells ;  no  tedious  waiting 
in  hot  sun  or  drenching  rain,  while  an  unstable  tent 
was  being  fumblingly  put  up  and  a  camp  bed  put  to- 
gether. When  the  motor  halted  for  the  night  Lucy 
was  transferred  by  kind  hands,  as  in  a  dream,  to  a 
clean,  sweet,  cool  couch  in  a  decent  bedroom.  When 


400     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

it  was  morning,  after  a  breakfast  she  scarcely  seemed 
to  taste,  she  was  placed  in  a  flying-bed  —  as  the  motor 
seemed  —  and  so  the  dream  journey  went  on  till  she 
was  aware  of  being  in  a  boat  and  then  hoisted  up  into 
the  air  in  a  bed,  and  finally  put  to  rest  in  a  cool  cabin. 
Dream  figures  would  pass  through  this  half -real  en- 
vironment. John  Baines  seemed  sometimes  to  stand 
by  her  bed  or  help  her  into  the  motor ;  Maud  became 
confused  with  Ann,  but  surely  a  much  gentler  Ann? 
There  was  Brother  Bayley,  looking  for  her  to  read 
slowly  through  the  Book  of  Exodus,  so  that  he  might 
translate  it,  phrase  after  phrase,  into  Kagulu.  .  .  . 

Once  on  the  great  steamer  of  the  Deutsch  Ost- 
afrikansche  Linie  there  seemed  a  ray  of  hope.  They 
had  deck  cabins  allotted  to  them.  Two  German  Staff 
officers  pretended  they  were  just  as  comfortable  on  the 
tier  below,  and  it  would  be  a  pleasure  to  help  in  Mrs. 
Brentham's  recovery.  She  was  quite  a  personage  in 
the  history  of  East  Africa.  .  .  .  The  steamer's  cap- 
tain, himself  a  married  man,  was  kindness  embodied. 
He  broke  through  any  regulations  there  might  be  to 
the  contrary  and  had  a  section  of  the  deck  screened 
off  opposite  their  cabins,  so  that  no  other  passengers 
might  pass  through  this  open-air,  shaded  parlour  in 
wrhich  the  sick  woman  lay  on  a  couch  in  a  half -dream, 
even  in  a  happy  dream.  Her  day-bed  or  couch  was 
screwed  to  the  deck  so  that  it  would  not  be  jarred  or 
dislodged  by  movements  of  the  vessel.  Here  she  could 
lie  all  day  or  all  night;  her  husband  and  her  sister-in- 
law  —  such  a  formal  term  should  not  have  been  ap- 
plied to  Maud,  she  said ;  "  sister  in  very  truth  " —  could 
take  their  meal  alongside  where  she  lay. 

At  Unguja  there  came  on  board  the  new  British 
Agent,  Sir  Edward  Walrond,  of  the  Foreign  Office,  to 
take  farewell  of  Brentham  since  the  latter  could  not 
leave  his  wife.  He  seemed  to  pass  in  and  out  of  Lucy's 
dream  —  a  pleasantly  cynical  person  who  only  ex- 


EIGHT  YEARS  HAVE  PASSED  BY        401 

pressed  sympathy  with  Roger  by  a  hand-grip  and 
laughed  away  the  idea  of  Mrs.  Brentham  not  being  able 
to  land  at  Naples  and  see  the  sights  there,  "  with  Ted 
Parsons  to  take  you  round  —  he  is  becoming  very  Pom- 
peian  in  manner,  I'm  told."  .  .  .  Walrond  sends  on 
board  all  the  fruit  and  delicacies  he  can  think  of,  which 
might  tempt  Mrs.  Brentham's  appetite. 

Archdeacon  Gravening,  who  married  her  to  John  and 
then  to  Roger,  comes  off  to  see  her.  He  is  quite  the 
old  man  now,  the  veteran  of  the  Anglican  Mission,  al- 
ways there,  whatever  Missionary  Bishops  come  and  go, 
always  writing  down  Bantu  languages,  always  trying 
to  kill  some  secret  sorrow  of  his  own.  He  is  alone 
with  Lucy,  kneels  down  for  a  few  minutes  by  her  day- 
bed,  takes  her  hand,  prays  silently,  says  aloud :  "  My 
poor,  poor  child :  I  pray  with  all  my  heart  you  may 
surmount  this  weakness  and  live  to  be  loved  by  your 
children.  Think  sometimes,  when  you  are  well  and 
happy  in  England,  of  the  lonely  old  man  who  married 
you  to  your  good  husband.  I  always  said  Brentham 
had  done  the  right  thing." 

Then  he  lays  some  flowers  between  her  hands  that 
the  Anglican  Sisters  have  sent  her.  Lucy  in  her  dream 
thinks  they  are  marrying  her  again  to  Roger,  and 
laughs  at  the  absurdity  of  their  not  knowing  she  has 
been  his  faithful  wife  for — for  —  it  is  all  so  con- 
fusing —  oh,  ever  so  many  years.  .  .  . 

Out  in  the  open  sea,  the  fresh  boisterous  air  of  the 
monsoon  gives  a  flickering  stimulation  to  the  enfeebled 
brain  and  body,  even  causes  a  certain  irritability  and 
impatience,  rare  to  her  gentleness.  "  Roger !  Can't 
they  take  me  quickly  home?  Can't  they  make  the  ship 
go  faster?  .  .  ." 

"  My  darling,  she  is  going  at  a  splendid  rate ;  we 
shall  be  at  Aden  in  four  days.  Aden !  You  remember 
Aden?  Where  we  took  Emilia  Bazzard  with  us  to 
spend  that  day,  and  saw  the  cisterns?  I  want  you  to 


402      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

get  ever  so  much  better  in  those  four  days,  because  I 
must  leave  you  then.  .  .  ."  Hastens  to  add,  as  her 
hold  on  his  hand  tightens :  "  Oh,  only  for  a  couple  of 
hours  whilst  Maud  takes  my  place,  because  I  want  to 
pay  off  our  four  Somalis  on  shore.  If  I  gave  them  all 
their  money  on  the  ship  they  might  gamble  it  away  or 
have  it  stolen.  You  remember  the  Somalis  ?  Our  old 
faithfuls  —  been  with  us  for  —  what  is  it?  Eighteen 
years.  Wonderful!  They  travelled  down  with  us 
from  Magara  —  often  carried  you  out  of  the  motor 
or  into  the  boat.  Every  day  they  come  for  your 
news." 

But  she  is  not  listening.  ..."  Roger!  " 

"Yes,  dear?" 

"  I  don't  want  to  get  off  at  Naples,  and  I  don't  want 
you  or  Maud  to  leave  me  at  Naples :  I  want  to  go  on 
and  on  in  this  steamer  till  we  reach  England.  .  .  . 
And,  Roger!  If  I  die  before  we  get  there,  don't 
throw  me  into  the  sea  as  they  generally  do  with  people 
who  die  on  ...  board  .  .  .  ship  .  .  .  take  me  on 
with  you  to  England  .  .  .  take  me  home,  won't  you? 
Then  I  shan't  mind  dying.  We've  all  got  to  die  some 
day  .  .  .  that's  what  makes  it  all  so  sad.  ...  I  can't 
believe  there  can  come  an  end  to  love,  not  love  like 
mine  for  you ;  but  it's  horrible  to  think  of  lying  at  the 
bottom  of  the  sea,  and  you  perhaps  in  a  grave  on 
shore.  .  .  ." 

"  You  mustn't  talk  like  this  or  you'll  break  my  heart 
.  .  .  but  if  it  eases  your  mind,  I  promise  you  that  you 
shall  be  taken  home." 

Then  comes  Maud  —  with  the  ship's  doctor  —  and 
a  hospital  nurse,  always  carried  on  board  for  such 
cases.  There  is  going  to  be  transfusion  of  blood,  and 
Roger  bares  his  arm.  .  .  . 

A  pause  afterwards  and  she  sleeps,  sleeps  and  wakes, 
dreams  she  is  with  her  children  and  they  only  call  her 
"  Aunt  Sibyl,"  dreams  she  is  once  more  at  Mr.  Calla- 


EIGHT  YEARS  HAVE  PASSED  BY        403 

way's,  waiting  to  know  if  Roger  is  going  to  marry 
her.  .  .  .  Mr.  Callaway  ?  Didn't  she  overhear  Roger 
asking  after  him  from  some  one  who  came  on  board, 
and  didn't  they  reply  "  Died  of  blackwater  fever,  years 
ago  "  ?  We  must  all  die  sooner  or  later,  but  oh,  why 
might  it  not  be  later  in  her  case  ?  So  much  to  live  for ! 

She  is  awake  again,  looking  at  the  brilliant  sunlight 
on  the  dancing  waves  and  the  flying  fish  that  rise  in 
mechanical  parabolas  of  flight  that  become  monotonous. 
Some  form  is  presently  standing  between  her  and  this 
effulgence  of  sun  on  water.  ...  It  is  the  ship's  cap- 
tain, a  big  burly  man  with  a  close-clipped,  russet  beard 
and  kind  blue  eyes.  "  Zo,"  he  says,  with  a  mixture  of 
gravity  and  lightness,  "  that  is  bet-ter,  mock  bet-ter.  A 
.  .  .  leetle  .  .  .  colour  .  .  .  now  ...  in  ...  the  .  .  . 
cheeks.  .  .  ."  But  his  well-meant  encouragement 
trails  away  into  pitiful  silence  before  her  ethereal 
beauty  and  other-worldliness.  Tired  middle  age  has 
passed  from  her  face  with  this  infusion  of  Roger's 
blood.  "  What  a  pretty  woman  she  must  have  been  at 
one  time!  "  he  says  to  himself.  His  blue  eyes  fill  with 
tears,  and  he  turns  away  thanking  his  German  God  that 
his  own  Frau  is  not  in  the  least  likely  to  die  of  anae- 
mia. .  .  . 

The  heat  and  airlessness  of  the  Red  Sea  bring  back 
a  lowering  of  vitality.  .  .  .  The  poor  sick  brain,  in- 
sufficiently supplied  with  red  blood,  even  inspires  a 
peevish  tone  in  the  dying  woman.  "  Oh,  Roger !  I've 
spoilt  your  life!  You  only  married  me  'to  do  the 
right  thing ' !  I  ought  to  have  refused.  ...  I  broke 
your  career,"  she  wailed. 

"Lucy!  How  can  you  say  such  cruel  things. 
Here,  drink  this.  This'll  put  life  and  sense  into  you. 
Haven't  I  told  you,  over  and  over  again  —  Aren't  your 
children  a  testimony  to  our  love?  But  there!  It's 
cruel  to  argue  with  an  invalid.  I  shall  send  Maud  to 
talk  sense  to  you." 


404     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

"  No,  stay  with  me.  I  want  to  be  with  you  every 
minute  of  the  life  that  remains  to  me." 

They  pass  through  the  Suez  Canal,  but  she  is  in- 
sensible mostly  now  to  changes  of  scenery  or  to  noises, 
or  to  anything  but  the  absence  of  Roger  from  her  side. 
The  fresh  breezes  of  the  Mediterranean  cause  a  re- 
vival of  mentality.  "  My  poor  Roger,"  she  says  one 
day  when  the  snow  peaks  of  Crete  give  hope  of  an 
approaching  Europe,  "  how  grey  you  have  grown !  I 
never  noticed  it  before.  Greyer  than  you  ought  to  be 
at  your  age."  And  she  caresses  his  hair  with  an  emaci- 
ated hand.  .  .  . 

"  Tell  Maud  —  I  never  see  her  now,  yon  are  with  me 
always,  but  tell  Maud  I  love  her  better  than  any  one  in 
the  world,  except  you.  Better  than  my  children. 
They  won't  miss  me.  Africa  has  always  come  between 
us.  Still,  all  the  same  I  send  my  thanks  to  Sibyl  .  .  . 
and  poor  mother.  .  .  .  And  tell  Mrs.  Baines  I  thought 
kindly  of  her  ...  I  was  to  blame.  .  .  .  But  some- 
thing tells  me  John  has  long  since  understood  and 
forgiven.  .  .  . 

"  And,  Roger?     Are  you  there?  "... 

"  Always  here,  darling."  .  .  . 

"  Do  something  for  the  Miss  Calthorps  —  you  know 
—  where  I  was  at  school.  Some  one  told  me  they  were 
in  poor  circumstances.  They  must  be  quite  old  now." 

"  They  shall  be  seen  to." 

The  ship  passed  through  the  Straits  of  Messina. 
Etna  behind  them  on  the  south-west,  with  its  coronet 
of  snow.  Far  away  to  the  north-west  was  the  chain  of 
the  Lipari  Islands,  blue  pyramids  with  spectacular  col- 
umns of  yellow-purple  smoke  issuing  from  their  cra- 
ters against  the  approaching  sunset.  The  Tyrrhenian 
Sea  was  incarnadine  under  the  level  rays  of  the  sinking 
sun.  To  the  east  rose  the  green  and  furrowed  heights 
of  Aspromonte,  green-gold  and  violet  in  the  light  of 
the  sunset,  dotted,  especially  along  the  sea-base,  with 


EIGHT  YEARS  HAVE  PASSED  BY        405 

pink-white  houses  and  churches  with  their  campanili 
like  pink  fingers  pointing  upwards.  Lucy's  eyes  gazed 
their  last  on  this  splendid  spectacle  of  earthly  beauty. 
Roger,  still  holding  her  hand,  lay  half  across  her  bed, 
more  haggard  than  she,  unshaven,  hollow-cheeked, 
emaciated  with  futile  blood-letting,  worn  out  with  want 
of  sleep  and  no  appetite  for  eating,  and  the  long  vigil 
over  his  dying  wife.  He  slept  now,  soundly.  Her 
eyes  gazed  at  his  closed  eyelids  for  one  moment;  then 
motion  and  life  passed  from  them 

***** 

It  was  always  Maud's  function  in  this  sad  world  to 
attend  to  the  plain  matters  of  business  whilst  others 
gave  way  to  a  grief  that  knew  no  solace,  or  a  joy  that 
spurned  formalities.  So  it  was  she  who  left  the  ship 
at  Naples,  called  on  Roger's  old  friend,  Ted  Parsons, 
the  Consul-General,  sent  telegrams  in  all  the  necessary 
directions,  and  fulfilled  all  necessary  forms  and  cere- 
monies. Whether  it  was  an  unusual  concession  or  not, 
it  was  at  once  agreed  that  the  body  of  Mrs.  Brentham, 
enclosed  in  a  "  shell  " —  they  obtained  what  was  nec- 
essary from  Naples  —  should  be  carried  on  with  her 
grief-distraught  husband  and  her  husband's  sister  to 
Southampton.  There  all  three  of  them  were  landed, 
and  thence  they  proceeded  in  a  very  humdrum  way  by 
South-Western  and  Great-Western  railways  to  Read- 
ing, where  the  two  live  ones  put  up  at  an  hotel  so  com- 
monplace and  out  of  date  that  it  momentarily  wiped 
up  sentiment  and  froze  the  tears  in  their  tear-glands ; 
while  poor  Lucy's  remains  were  temporarily  lodged  in 
a  kind  of  Chapelle  ardente  used  by  the  chief  under- 
taker, who  did  things  in  style.  No  sign  of  life  from 
Sibyl.  Evidently  there  was  no  one  at  home  at  Engle- 
dene.  Lucy's  parents  and  Lucy's  children  were  com- 
municated with,  and  in  due  course  the  funeral  took 
place  at  Aldermaston.  Roger  even  sent  word  of  it  — 
remembering  Lucy's  message  —  to  Mrs.  Baines  at 


4o6      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

Theale;  and  to  the  intense  surprise  of  every  one  in  the 
neighbourhood  Mrs.  Baines  stalked  into  the  church  and 
churchyard,  attended  the  burial,  and  then  strode  away 
to  the  station,  and  so  back  to  Theale,  refusing  hospi- 
tality at  Church  Farm  by  a  simple  shake  of  the  gaunt 
grey  head,  down  the  cheeks  of  which,  however,  a  tear 
or  two  had  trickled. 

Lucy  came  to  rest  at  last  in  the  churchyard  of  Alder- 
maston,  under  the  boughs  of  one  of  those  superb  blue 
cedars  of  the  Park  which  lean  out  over  the  walls  of 
mellow  brick.  She  had  so  admired  these  cedars  in  her 
dawning  sense  of  beauty  when  she  taught  in  the  neigh- 
bouring school ;  and  when  she  was  wont  to  pace  up 
and  down  the  Mortimer  Road  considering  whether  or 
not  she  should  go  out  to  Africa  to  marry  John  Baines. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

THE    END    OF    SIBYL 

FOR  three  weeks  after  Lucy's  burial,  Roger  scarcely 
knew  what  he  did  or  whom  he  saw.  His  boys  and 
girls  went  back  to  school  and  college ;  Maud  busied  her- 
self in  reconnoitring  for  a  home,  some  place  not  too 
expensive  to  keep  up,  where  the  children  might  come  in 
school  holidays,  where  Roger  might  find  rest,  isola- 
tion, the  healing  power  of  country  life  when  he  was 
wearied  with  towns  and  travel.  She  designed  to  ac- 
quire for  him  and  her  the  old  Vicarage  at  Farleigh 
Wallop.  The  Vicar  who  had  succeeded  their  father, 
instead  of  being  an  archaeologist,  to  whom  present-day 
life  was  a  wearisome  fact  that  must  obtrude  itself  as 
little  as  possible  on  his  studies,  liked  to  reside  where 
the  population  was  thickest.  Of  the  two  villages,  there- 
fore, within  his  cure  of  souls  he  chose  Cliddesden  for 
his  residence  as  being  the  more  populous,  and  let  the 
vicarage  at  Farleigh  whenever  he  could  find  a  tenant. 
This  of  course  was  the  old  home  of  the  Brenthams  and 
the  place  where  Maud  had  lived  up  to  the  time  of  her 
father's  death.  She  had  no  inquiries  to  make  as  to 
drainage  or  water.  She  knew  its  charms  and  its  weak- 
nesses ;  and  finding  it  untenanted  she  soon  concluded  an 
agreement  with  the  Vicar  to  take  it  on  a  reasonable  rent 
and  with  some  security  of  tenure.  To  live  there  once 
more  would  be  for  her  and  Roger  —  and  for  Maurice 
too,  and  Geoffrey  when  he  chose  to  come  and  see  them 
—  a  pleasant  linking-up  of  past  with  present. 

Meantime,  Roger  returned  from  three  weeks  of  aim- 
less wanderings  on  a  bicycle  or  in  a  motor,  and  from 

407 


4o8     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

visits  to  bankers,  tailors,  and  the  Foreign  Office  in 
London,  to  spend  a  few  days  with  Maurice  at  Engle- 
field  Lodge. 

The  first  question  he  put  to  his  brother  was,  "  Where 
on  earth  is  Sibyl  ?  " 

Maurice:  "  I  didn't  like  to  tell  you  before,  Sibyl  is 
rather  under  the  weather,  as  Geoffrey  would  say.  Sil- 
chester  —  Clithy,  as  she  always  will  call  him  —  came  of 
age  last  year,  as  you  know.  Sibyl  seemed  a  bit  off 
colour  then,  and  began  really  to  look  somewhere  near 
her  age  —  at  last.  But  she  carried  off  things  well. 
Gave  fetes  on  all  the  different  properties  and  attended 
most  of  them.  .  .  .  Gave  political  dinner  parties  in 
London  to  introduce  her  son  to  such  great  pots  as  she 
could  get  to  come  to  them,  before  he  took  his  seat  in 
the  House  of  Lords.  She  was  present  at  the  Trustees' 
meetings  to  give  an  account  of  her  stewardship.  They 
congratulated  her  —  and  me  —  and  you,  in  retrospect 
—  on  the  way  in  which  the  Estate  had  been  managed 
during  the  long  minority;  and  told  Master  Clithy  he 
was  remarkably  lucky  to  have  such  a  mother  and  such 
Agents.  He  took  it  all  with  a  certain  amount  of 
pompous  acquiescence.  .  .  .  He  has  grown  into  an 
awful  prig,  you  will  find,  and  thinks  a  tremendous  lot 
of  himself.  \Vhether  I  shall  stay  on  with  him  I  hardly 
know.  I've  saved  a  bit,  haven't  spent  any  of  my  share 
in  Dad's  money,  and  I  could  always  go  back  to  the 
Bar.  P'raps  if  you  returned  to  Africa  I'd  go  with  you 
if  you'd  let  me?  I'm  rather  fed  up  with  England  and 
office  work.  .  .  . 

"  However,  about  Sib.  .  .  .  She  came  down  here 
last  summer  and  didn't  have  a  house  party.  Lived 
quite  alone  with  your  kids.  They've  come  to  look  upon 
Engledene  as  quite  their  home.  Of  course-  when  she 
couldn't  put  'em  up  I  had  them  here.  Well,  as  I  say, 
she  seemed  '  under  the  weather/  Once  or  twice  when 
I  rather  bounced  in  on  Estate  business,  I  thought  she'd 


THE  END  OF  SIBYL  409 

been  crying.  Wasn't  my  business  to  ask  what  for. 
She  wasn't  an  easy  person  to  question  a*nd  could  lay 
you  out  with  her  tongue  if  you  seemed  to  be  meddling 
with  what  didn't  concern  you.  Then  all  at  once  last 
October  I  had  a  note  from  her  to  say  that  she  had 
gone  into  a  nursing  home  to  have  an  operation,  that  I 
wasn't  to  fuss  about  it  or  come  to  inquire,  that  if  she 
was  away  .at  Christmas  -time  your  children  were  to  come 
here  from  school  just  the  same  'and  I  was  to  represent 
her  as  host.  .  .  ." 

Roger:  "  What  was  the  operation  for?  All  this  is 
news  to  me." 

Maurice:  "  So  I  guessed.  She  made  me  promise 
not  to  write  and  tell  you  or  Lucy  .  .  .  said  it  would  be 
all  over,  long  before  you  were  back,  and  turn  out  to  be 
a  fuss  about  nothing.  As  to  what  it  was,  why  I  sup- 
pose she  had  reached  a  certain  stage  in  life  when  most 
women  have  complications  and  ten  per  cent,  of  'em  are 
operated  on  —  glands,  cysts,  tumours.  .  .  . 

"  The  operation  took  place  —  she  was  jolly  careful 
to  keep  it  out  of  the  papers  —  I  doubt  if  even  Clithy 
knew  anything  till  it  was  well  over.  He  was  travelling 
in  Russia  to  study  the  Russian  theatres  and  their  ar- 
rangements about  scenery.  .  .  .  After  she  recovered 
the  doctors  sent  her  to  Aix  and  then  to  St.  Tropez  on 
the  Riviera.  .  .  .  Clithy  joined  her  there.  I  sent  her 
the  telegram  about  .  .  .  about  .  .  .  Lucy's  death.  I 
dare  say  you  noticed  the  perfectly  magnificent  wreaths 
they  both  sent  for  the  funeral.  Clithy's  came  down 
from  some  place  in  Regent  Street  and  had  a  card  on  it 
'  To  my  dear  Aunt  Lucy.'  .  .  .  Only  human  touch 
about  him  .  .  .  awfully  fond  of  your  wife  ...  al- 
ways said  he  liked  her  much  more  than  his  mpther. 
.  .  .  But  he  needn't  have  said  it  so  often,  though  Sibyl 
only  used  to  laugh.  Her  wreath  was  made  here  from 
the  very  best  things  we  had  got  in  the  hot-houses  .  .  . 
only  because  Sibyl  wrote  that  Lucy  so  loved  to  walk 


4io     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

in  these  houses  and  fancy  she  was  back  in  Africa.  .  .  . 
However,  I  had  a  letter  from  her  three  days  ago.  .  .  ." 
(Takes  it  out  and  reads:  "  Tell  Roger  not  to  dream 
of  coming  out  here,  because  I  am  just  going  away.  I 
am  writing  him  in  a  few  days.")  "There!  Now 
she'll  soon  tell  you  everything  about  herself.  .  .  . 

"What  about  yon?     Have  you  made  any  plans  as 
yet?" 

Roger:  "Lucy's  death  has  cut  my  life  in  two;  I 
shall  have  to  alter  all  the  programme  we  used  to  plan 
out  together,  she  and  I  and  Maud.  Of  course  there 
are  the  children  to  think  about.  .  .  .  \Vhere  are  the 
matches?  I'll  light  a  pipe  and  tell  you  my  ideas.  .  .  ." 
(A  silence  .  .  .  puffs  ...)...  "I've  not  done 
badly  out  of  this  Happy  Valley  Concession.  I've  sold 
my  shares  in  it  —  all  but  five  hundred,  kept  them  just 
to  retain  an  interest,  don't  you  know,  get  the  Company's 
reports  from  time  to  time  —  I've  sold  my  shares  at 
two  pounds  a  share  to  the  Schraders'  group.  That 
brings  me  in  close  upon  £75,000.  I  haven't  saved 
much  besides  .  .  .  purposely  lived  well  out  there  and 
entertained  a  good  deal,  and  gave  .  .  .  Lucy  .  .  .  and 
Maud  all  they  wanted,  and  had  to  pay  for  the  little 
'uns'  schooling  at  home.  However,  there  I  am  at  this 
moment  with  about  £75,000  at  my  bank  on  deposit  and 
twelve  hundred  or  so  outstanding  to  my  current  ac- 
count. ...  I'm  going  first  of  all  to  give  ten  thousand 
pounds  down  to  Maud.  I  consider  she  has  earned  it. 

"  And  then  I  must  make  a  new  will  .  .  .  and  I  want 
to  ask  you,  old  chap,  to  be  one  of  the  executors.  Wrill 
you?  And  p'raps  Geoff  the  other.  After  all,  it  isn't 
Geoff  we  dislike,  it's  that  confounded,  pious  doe-rabbit 
of  a  wife  of  his.  However 

"  Well  then,  about  my  plans.  I  suppose  I  ought  to 
stay  at  home  at  Farleigh  —  I  shall  look  out  for  a  decent 
flat  in  London  —  and  get  to  know  my  children.  Some- 


THE  END  OF  SIBYL  411 

how  it's  that  I  can't  take  to.  They  have  grown  up  so 
outside  all  my  thoughts  and  schemes  and  interests. 
They  don't  care  a  hang  about  Africa.  John  has  been 
making  a  young  fool  of  himself  at  Sandhurst  .  .  . 
been  betting  and  borrowing  and  getting  into  debt.  I'm 
glad  his  mother  didn't  know.  .  .  .  Well,  I  shall  square 
up  all  that,  but  I  shall  insist  on  his  going  in  for  the 
Indian  Army  —  Staff  Corps  —  same  as  I  did.  ...  A 
man  if  he's  got  ability  couldn't  have  a  better  educa- 
tion. .  .  .  He's  a  good-looking  boy,  John  —  I  expect 
he  thinks  me  an  old  fogey  from  the  backwoods.  .  .  . 
India's  the  school  for  him.  And  as  to  Ambrose,  he 
must  go  to  Cambridge,  when  he  leaves  Harrow,  and 
I  shall  try  and  get  him  a  nomination  for  the  Consular 
Service.  .  .  .  That's  the  other  good  school  for  a  Brit- 
ish citizen.  You'll  think  me  jolly  conceited,  just  be- 
cause those  are  the  two  careers  I've  followed. 
But  .  .  ."  (smokes  and  puffs). 

"  Well  then,  there  are  the  two  girls.  Fat  Maud  — 
she  was  furious  because  I  revived  the  old  name  —  says 
long  ago  '  Aunt  Sibyl '  agreed  it  should  be  compro- 
mised by  her  being  called  Fatima.  .  .  .  Fatima,  I 
gather,  is  eighteen,  and  young  Sibyl  is  fourteen.  .  .  . 
For  the  present  Maud  will  look  after  them,  and  I  shall 
have  'em  up  to  London  every  now  and  then  for  a  few 
weeks.  In  course  of  time  I  suppose  they'll  want  to  be 
presented.  Dare  say  old  Sibyl  will  do  that,  or  if  she's 
away,  Lady  Dewburn.  By  the  bye,  she  wrote  me  an 
awfully  sweet  letter  about  Lucy  ..."  (ponders  and 
smokes). 

"  In  due  time  the  girls'll  marry,  and  if  they  pick  up 
the  right  kind  of  husband  I  shall  give  'em  each  a  por- 
tion of  my  ill-gotten  wealth.  There!  That's  what 
I've  planned  out,  and  I  dare  say  it  'ud  ha'  been  quite 
different  if  my  darling  Luce  had  lived.  I  should  have 
been  reconciled  then  to  settling  dowrn  at  home.  As  it 


4i2     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

is  —  I  shall  travel  a  bit  —  Go  to  Germany  and  try  to 
find  out  what  the  Germans  are  up  to.  ...  Go  back  to 
Africa  p'raps  ...  7  don't  know.  .  .  ." 

A  few  days  after  this  conversation,  Roger  received 
a  letter  from  Sibyl: 

Villa  les  Pins, 

Grimaud^,  pres  St.  Tropez, 

Var, 

June  12,  1909. 
DEAR  ROGER, — 

Maurice  will  have  given  you  all  the  news  there  is 
about  me,  except  what  I  am  going  to  add  in  this  letter. 

I  am  not  going  to  attempt  any  sympathy  at  present 
ovef  your  loss.  Maud's  telegram  from  Naples  was 
forwarded  on  to  me  here  and  it  gave  me  a  horrid  turn. 
I  often  used  to  tease  Lucy:  I  am  cat-scratchy  to  every 
one,  I  fear.  Why?  I  don't  know:  something  to  do 
with  my  internal  organs,  I  dare  say.  But  I  became 
sincerely  fond  of  her,  after  being  perfectly  horrid  to 
her  when  we  first  met.  She  seemed  to  grow  on  one. 
I  should  have  liked  her  always  to  stay  at  Englefield. 

Heigh  ho!  I  am  very  much  inclined  to  whimper 
about  myself.  I  have  been  through  a  ghastly  time. 
.  .  .  Some  day,  if  I  live,  I  will  tell  you.  Meantime, 
though  I  am  aching  to  see  you  I  am  going  to  postpone- 
that  happiness,  and  instead  am  going  round  the  world 
with  Vicky  Masham. 

The  doctors  seem  to  think  —  I  dare  say  it  is  only 
because  they  have  nothing  else  to  suggest  —  that  if  I 
went  on  a  long  sea  voyage  for  about  a  year  —  I  mean, 
kept  constantly  travelling  on  the  sea  —  I  should  get 
quite  strong  again.  Perhaps  I  shall.  I  want  to  give 
myself  every  chance  —  it  seems  so  stupid  to  die  before 
you're  seventy.  Also  it  occurred  to  me  the  other  day 
that  for  a  woman  to  have  raved  for  twenty  years  about 


THE  END  OF  SIBYL  413 

the  British  Empire  and  yet  never  to  have  seen  any  part 
of  it  outside  Great  Britain,  except  Cape  Town  and 
Stellenbosch,  and  once  when  we  went  to  Jersey  from 
Dinant  —  was  rather  silly.  So  Vicky  and  I  are  start- 
ing from  Marseilles  next  Sunday  in  a  P.  and  O.,  bound 
for  Ceylon,  and  after  that  Japan.  Not  that  Japan  is 
British  —  I  believe  —  but  of  course  we  aren't  going  to 
be  pedantic.  Then  I  suppose  we  shall  "  do  "  Australia 
and  New  Zealand  —  only  I'm  afraid  New  Zealand  is 
rather  muttony,  isn't  it?  Excessively  worthy  and  all 
that,  but  lives  chiefly  on  mutton  and  stewed  tea.  How- 
ever, there  are  geysers  and  pink  terraces,  if  you  look 
for  them.  Then  there  will  be  a  lovely  cruise  across 
the  Pacific,  and  beach-combers  and  impossibly  large 
oysters  that  would  dine  a  family  of  six,  and  brown 
people  with  no  morals  and  beautiful  sinuous  forms,  and 
finally  San  Francisco  and  California.  After  that  — 
however,  sufficient  for  the  day  is  the  evil  thereof. 
Vicky  or  I  will  bombard  you  with  picture  post-cards 
recording  our  progress,  and  when  —  and  when  I'm 
quite  well  and  look  less  like  a  doomed  woman  —  I  will 
let  you  know,  and,  dearest  Roger,  we  will  pass  the  rest 
of  our  lives  together,  or  at  least  not  far  away  from  one 
another.  Your  children  shall  be  the  children  of  my 
old  age.  .  .  . 

Clithy  is  here,  but  as  soon  as  I  leave  for  Marseilles  he 
is  off  again  to  Russia.  He  has  promised  me  to  look 
you  up  when  he  returns.  You  will  find  him  now  defi- 
nitely fixed  as  to  appearance.  People  of  his  stamp  are 
like  that.  Between  nineteen  and  twenty-one,  they  quite 
quickly  assume  the  figure,  face,  style  by  which  they  are 
ever  after  going  to  be  known.  He  will  remind  you 

most  of  Lord  R ,  though  I  assure  you  there  is  'no 

innuendo  in  this.     I  dare  say  the  L 's  are  distant 

cousins  of  the  Mallards.  But  Clithy  is  essentially  the 
aristocratic  young  peer  who  may  be  a  fount  of  wisdom 
or  a  hollow  fraud  with  nothing  inside  an  irreproach- 


4i4     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

able  exterior.  He  is  a  mystery  to  me.  And  I  am  of 
little  interest  to  him.  The  only  woman  I  ever  heard 
him  mention  with  anything  like  a  kind  look  in  his  eyes 
was  Lucy.  The  Anne  of  Denmark  nose  is  still  there, 
undulating  and  with  a  bump  in  the  middle ;  but  the  rest 
of  the  face  has  grown  up  more  and  his  hair  is  a  nice 
dark  chestnut  brown. —  Well,  you  will  see  him  later,  so 
why  waste  time  in  describing  him? 

As  to  Vicky  Masham.  .  .  .  Of  course  you  want  to 
know  why,  etc. 

Well:  Vicky,  at  the  death  of  her  patron  saint,  Vic- 
toria the  Good,  was  left  with  little  more  than  her  pen- 
sion of  £500  a  year.  She  ought  to  have  had  ten  thou- 
sand pounds  of  her  own,  but  —  I  dare  say  you  saw  the 
scandal  in  the  papers?  She  and  her  sisters  gave  up 
much  of  their  means  to  save  their  shockingly  bad 
brother  from  going  to  prison  over  some  swindle  that 
.  .  .  Again  why  waste  words  ?  Maurice  could  tell  you 
all  about  it.  Well,  when  I  came  to  the  South  of  France 
after  Aix,  last  December,  I  was  dreadfully  hipped, 
fighting  a  certain  Terror  —  a  much  worse  terror  than 
the  one  you  used  to  write  to  me  about  who  lived  in  a 
Red  Crater  (rather  a  distinguished  address:  "The 
Red  Crater,  Iraku"),  and  who  went  to  Hell  by  the 
direct  route.  I  came  to  Monte  Carlo  amongst  other 
places  and  thought  if  I  kept  on  a  veil  and  wore  blue 
glasses  no  one  would  recognize  me.  In  the  Rooms  I 
saw  Victoria  Masham,  looking  very  melancholy  —  and 
oh,  so  old  —  and  quite  alone.  My  heart  was  touched, 
I  spoke  to  her  and  we  went  to  sit  on  the  terrace.  I 
told  her  my  troubles  and  she  told  me  hers.  Result: 
I  struck  a  bargain.  She  is  to  live  with  me  till  we  have 
our  first  quarrel;  I  am  to  board  her,  lodge  her.  wash 
her,  pay  all  possible  expenses,  and  give  her  a  little 
pocket  money,  over  and  above.  And  d'you  know,  I 
think  it's  going  to  be  quite  a  success !  We  haven't  had 
a  quarrel  yet!  I've  had  her  teeth  beautifully  done  by 


THE  END  OF  SIBYL  415 

an  American  dentist  at  Cannes,  so  my  nickname  only 
applies  a  little  —  he  was  too  clever  not  to  give  the  new 
set  a  soupgon  of  horsiness.  And  I've  made  her  buy 
a  quite  wonderful  ".transformation  " —  chez  Nicole  — 
reddish-brown,  streaked  with  grey. —  You'd  never 
guess.  She  has  plumped  out  a  good  deal,  for  although 
I've  a  wretched  appetite  myself  I  keep  a  good  table, 
and  upon  my  word  when  we  get  to  the  Colonies  I 
shouldn't  wonder  if  she  had  shoals  of  proposals.  She 
never  talks  about  anything  but  Queen  Victoria,  but  I 
find  that  —  somehow  —  awfully  soothing  —  takes  me 
back  to  the  happy  old  time  when  I  was  a  care- free  girl, 
proud  of  my  secret  engagement  to  you. 

***** 

Dear  Roger.  I  have  lost  all  my  good  looks.  That's 
why  I  don't  want  you  to  see  me  till  I  recover  them  — 
a  little.  Meantime,  dearest  of  friends  and  cousins,  if 
you  believe  in  Anything  with  a  power  to  save  —  alas! 
7  don't  —  pray  to  it  to  save  me  from  this  terror  that 
hangs  over  me  —  especially  in  the  silent  watches  of  the 
night  —  and  bring  me  back  safe  from  my  world-tour, 
with  at  least  another  ten  years  of  life  before  me. 

Whilst  I  am  away,  remember  Engledene  is  entirely 
at  your  children's  disposal.  I  have  written  to  the 
head  gardener  to  see  that  fresh  flowers  are  sent  every 
now  and  again  to  Lucy's  grave.  You  will  tell  him 
when?  Lucy  was  a  real  good  sort  and  I  think  she 
came  to  understand  me  and  forgive.  .  .  . 

Ever  yours, 

SIBYL. 

Roger  spent  the  remainder  of  1909  as  he  had 
planned:  looking  after  his  boys  and  girls  to  some  ex- 
tent, trying  to  get  interested  in  his  children.  The  girls 
bored  him  with  their  chatter  of  surface  things:  school 
quarrels  and  rivalries,  school  friendships,  school  mis- 
tresses; their  individual  tastes  in  chocolate  creams  and 


416     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

caramels;  their  school  sports;  the  actors  whom  they 
adored  —  at  a  distance  —  and  whose  photographs  they 
collected ;  their  disdain  for  those  silly  asses  the  Suffra- 
gettes —  they  themselves  would  never  want  a  vote ! 
The  two  boys  were  not  much  less  shallow  with  their 
Sandhurst  and  school-boy  slang — "top-hole,  sir," 
"  ripping,"  "  ruddy,"  "  rotters,"  "  we  rotted  'em  a 
bit  "  -  their  school-boy  games  of  such  vast  importance; 
their  dislike  of  anything  sincere,  original,  warm- 
hearted; their  rash  criticisms  of  great  writers,  frantic 
admiration  for  great  sportsmen,  religious  reverence 
for  cut  and  colour,  style  and  form ;  enthusiasm  in  gen- 
eral for  things  that  did  not  matter  and  contempt  for 
things  that  did. 

Was  he  like  that  at  their  age  ?  Had  Sibyl  the  elder 
at  sixteen  been  such  a  goose  as  Sibyl  the  younger? 
Was  it  the  hollow  falsity  of  a  classical  education,  the 
dreary  sham  of  School  Christianity  which  had  made  his 
boys  so  cynical,  so  coarse  in  their  tastes?  His  chil- 
dren were  good  to  look  at,  handsome,  healthy,  physi- 
cally well-bred.  But  weren't  they  —  weren't  their  con- 
temporaries a  bit  heartless?  These  in  particular  had 
forgotten  their  mother  completely.  Yet  surely  they 
might  have  remembered  Lucy's  unceasing  tenderness 
and  the  many  sacrifices  of  health  and  convenience  she 
had  made  for  them? 

In  the  press  of  that  day  and  in  the  books  and  plays 
most  in  vogue  you  were  supposed  to  make  everything 
give  way  to  the  pleasures,  needs,  caprices,  expectations 
of  the  young,  of  the  coming  generation.  But  why  had 
no  author  the  courage  to  point  out  the  lack  of  interest 
which  youth  under  twenty-one  possessed  for  most  per- 
sons of  matured  mind?  Girls  of  eighteen  wrote  novels 
entirely  without  experience  and  direct  observation-  of 
life,  merely  based  on  their  wishy-washy  recollections 
of  books  written  by  "  grown-ups  " ;  boys  of  eighteen 
published  sardonic  poems  and  green-cheese  essays  for 


THE  END  OF  SIBYL  417 

which  they  ought  to  have  been  birched,  not  boomed. 
How  infinitely  preferable  to  Roger,  when  he  put  his 
secret  thoughts  into  words,  was  the  society  of  middle- 
aged  friends  and  relations  of  his  own  period  in  life, 
\vho  really  had  brain  convolutions  moulded  by  sad  and 
joyous,  sharp  and  unusual  experience. 

Aunt  Maud  said  there  was  something  evidently  very 
wrong  with  his  liver,  and  his  sons  and  daughters  in  an 
interchange  of  eye-glances  gave  a  tacit  assent.  They 
had  felt  (though  they  had  never  dared  to  say  so  in  his 
hearing)  a  tiny  bit  ashamed  of  their  ineffective  mother. 
Wasn't  it  rather  infra  dig.  to  have  been  a  school- 
teacher and  a  missionary?  But  of  their  father  they 
all  stood  in  awe,  because  he  was  considered  in  his  time 
a  handsome  man,  was  now  of  distinguished  appearance, 
and  was  respected  in  the  best  circles  as  an  explorer,  a 
big-game  shot,  a  naturalist,  and  a  man  who  had  made 
some  part  of  Africa  pay.  But  if  he  stooped  to  their 
level  and  attempted  to  justify  this  eminence  by  talking 
technically  on  African  subjects  or  on  home  problems 
they  soon  showed  they  thought  him  a  bore. 

Aunt  Sibyl  they  spoke  of  warmly,  and  wailed  over 
the  illness  which  kept  her  absent  from  their  circle.  She 
was  their  ideal  of  a  modern  great  lady.  Her  cynical 
speeches  appealed  to  their  own  lack  of  convictions; 
there  was  nothing  "  soppy  "  about  Aunt  Sibyl. 

So  Roger  escaped  whenever  he  could  from  his  home 
circle  and  travelled  in  Germany,  France,  Holland, 
Italy,  in  order  to  study  the  game  of  foreign  politics, 
find  out  why  in  most  people's  light-hearted  opinion  a 
great  war  was  "  inevitable  "  as  a  solution  of  conflicting 
ambitions,  and  whether  it  might  not  be  possible  to  avert 
it  completely  if  only  Britain,  Germany,  the  United 
States  and  France  could  form  a  League  for  the  main- 
tenance of  peace. 

The  Schraders  made  much  of  him  in  Germany. 
Rather  timidly  they  stood  up  against  Potsdam,  tried 


4i8     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

to  create  an  opinion  in  the  South  German  States  — 
their  Alsatian  origin  carried  them  in  that  direction  — 
favourable  to  a  Naval  and  Colonial  understanding  with 
Britain.  At  their  instigation  Roger  gave  a  series  of 
addresses  in  western  and  southern  Germany  in  1910 
which  were  deemed  a  great  success,  though  they  were 
rather  frowned  on  in  Berlin.  He  promised  to  renew 
his  visit  and  his  lectures  in  the  autumn  of  1911. 

Meanwhile,  Sibyl  had  returned  to  London  in  the 
early  autumn  of  1910.  It  was  of  course  the  dead  sea- 
son, but  it  gradually  dawned  on  Society  that  she  in- 
tended to  entertain  no  more.  She  was  probably  going 
to  write  a  book  about  the  British  Empire;  she  had 
turned  quite  serious,  others  said,  and  was  going  in  for 
religion.  She  had  evidently  lost  her  health  and  —  no 
doubt  —  her  appearance. 

Roger  had  hastened  to  greet  her  in  the  much  shut-up 
house  in  Carlton  House  Terrace.  Here  she  sat,  gen- 
erally with  her  back  to  the  light.  He  was  prepared  to 
find  her  greatly  altered.  What  struck  him  most  was 
the  pathetic  thinness  of  face  and  hands,  and  the  shape- 
lessness  of  the  figure.  The  new  fashions  in  dress  — 
straight  up  and  down,  no  waist,  one  of  the  greatest 
revolutions  of  our  age  —  helped  her  here,  but  at  the 
expense  of  womanly  charm.  For  Roger  had  the  old- 
fashioned  man-mind  which  has  for  some  twenty  thou- 
sand years  —  did  it  not  begin-  in  Aurignacian  times  ?  - 
admired  the  incurve  below  the  well- furnished  female 
bust  and  the  outcurve  from  waist  to  hip. 

"  I'm  glad  you  came  so  promptly,"  said  Sibyl,  "  be- 
cause I'm  turning  out  of  this  gloomy  mansion  and  sur- 
rendering it  to  Clithy.  I  simply  can't  afford  to  keep 
it  up  and  Engledene  too,  and  although  he  says  of 
course  he  will  pay  for  everything  and  I  can  have  my 
own  suite  of  rooms,  I  somehow  fancy  a  cosy  little  flat 
which  I  could  share  with  Maud,  or  Vicky  Masham 
when  she  comes  back  from  the  States.  .  .  .  Yes,  I  left 


THE  END  OF  SIBYL  419 

her  at  Washington,  going  to  stay  at  the  White  House. 
I  came  back  alone  from  there,  but  I  had  sulky  Sophie 
to  look  after  me.  One  thing  that  makes  me  think, 
Roger,  that  I  am  really  ill,  really  doomed,  is  that 
Sophie  no  longer  gives  me  notice  whenever  any  whim 
of  mine  displeases  her.  I  am  sure  she  is  saying  to  her- 
self now,  '  The  poor  old  gal  won't  be  with  us  much 
longer :  better  hang  on  with  her  and  then  she  may  leave 
me  something.'  But  about  Vicky,  for  it  really  is  a 
good  story.  .  .  .  Only  first  I'm  going  to  —  or  you 
might  —  ring  for  tea.  Of  course  you'll  stay?  You 
couldn't  in  decency  refuse. —  Do  you  know,  we  haven't 
set  eyes  on  one  another  for  .  .  .  for  .  .  .  three  years? 
We  are  both  swallowing  pungent  things  we  might  say 
about  one  another's  appearance,  and  both  resolving  to 
bite  our  tongues  off  rather  than  say  them."  ...  (To 
servant:  "Tea  please;  and  ask  Miss  Mills  to  make 
the  sandwiches,  my  sandwiches,  I  mean.")  ...  "I 
have  to  take  these  frame-foods  in  the  form  of  sand- 
wiches, and  Sophie  has  learnt  the  art  of  making  them 
so  seductive  that  I  get  them  down  without  any  diffi- 
culty. .  .  . 

"  About  Vicky. —  Do  draw  up  your  chair ;  you 
needn't  be  so  frigid  with  a  moribund  friend.  Directly 
it  became  known  in  California  that  Vicky  had  been  a 
maid  of  honour  to  the  late  Queen  Victoria,  my  dear, 
the  Americans  nearly  killed  us  with  kindness!  Our 
roles  were  reversed.  She  was  the  lady  of  distinction 
and  /  was  her  travelling  companion.  You  know  the 
Americans,  especially  in  the  west  and  east,  have  a  culte 
for  Queen  Victoria,  and  Vicky's  stories  of  her  home 
life  held  them  spell-bound.  She  felt  in  her  position  it 
wouldn't  be  right  to  lecture  publicly  on  her  late  mis- 
tress, but  the  difficulty  was  got  over. —  D'you  still 
drink  tea  without  sugar?  I'm  told  I  ought  to  take  it  — 
got  over  by  drawing-room  meetings,  tickets  subscribed 
for,  and  no  charge  at  the  door,  a  sumptuous  tea  —  sup- 


420     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

posed  to  be  modelled  on  the  kind  of  tea  the  Queen  took 
at  Osborne  —  served  in  the  middle  of  Vicky's  talk. 
She  refused  to  take  any  direct  payment,  so  they  sent 
her  thumping  cheques  for  her  travelling  expenses. 
And  now  she's  going  to  put  her  talks  on  Queen  Vic- 
toria as  Mother,  Wife  and  Queen  into  a  book. —  One 
\vay  and  another,  she'll  make  five  or  six  thousand 
pounds  out  of  the  whole  business.  And  I'm  jolly  glad. 
It'll  be  some  provision  for  her  real  old  age.  after  I'm 
gone  —  for  I  shan't  have  much  to  leave,  and  most  of 
that  I  must  give  to  my  sisters  in  the  Colonies  and  to 
your  Sibyl,  and  some  of  my  servants.  .  .  . 

"  Now :  you've  got  endless  things  to  tell  me.  In- 
deed I  really  can't  see  why  we  should  be  separated, 
now,  except  when  we  are  put  to  bed.  You  must  be  a 
mental  wreck,  and  I  am  a  physical  one.  ...  I  got 
frightfully  tired  in  the  States  —  it  spoilt  much  of  the 
good  I  derived  from  the  long  steamer  voyages.  .  .  . 
We  are  simply  two  imprisoned  souls  in  very  battered 
cages.  All  the  gilding  is  off  mine." 

Roger  saw  as  much  of  Lady  Silchester  as  he  could 
during  the  last  months  of  1910.  He  and  Maud  assisted 
her  to  find  just  the  right  sort  of  flat,  where  she  would 
have  no  household  worries,  where,  in  fact,  she  need 
only  keep  Sophie  to  look  after  her.  They  all  spent  a 
reasonably  merry  Christmas  at  Engledene,  where  Lord 
Silchester  joined  them,  and  where  Fatima  —  Maud 
junior  —  expressed  and  perhaps  felt  such  an  intense  in- 
terest in  his  Keltic  operas  and  reforms  in  stage  scenery 
that  a  glint  of  the  match-maker's  eagerness  came  into 
Sibyl's  tired  eyes ;  she  pressed  Roger's  hand  and  mur- 
mured, "  Wouldn't  it  be  too  delightful  .  .  .  ?  " 

During  the  first  half  of  1911  the  Intelligence  Divi- 
sion of  the  War  Office  discovered  Major  Brentham  as  a 
really  great  authority  on  African  geography  and  Afri- 
can campaigns,  and  he  worked  there  over  maps  and 


THE  END  OF  SIBYL  421 

gave  them  in  addition  much  other  information.  As 
some  return  he  was  gazetted  Colonel,  and  again  there 
was  talk  of  utilizing  such  an  administrative  capacity  in 
our  own  dominions. 

In  June,  1911,  Sibyl's  physician  and  surgeon  were 
not  altogether  satisfied  as  to  her  progress  towards  re- 
covery, and  suggested  she  might  derive  great  benefit 
from  the  waters  of  Villette,  a  thermal  station  in  the 
east  of  France  near  the  Vosges.  So  she  said  to  Roger  : 
"  You  look  quite  as  ill  as  I  feel.  It's  malaria.  You 
never  quite  got  rid  of  that  blackwater  fever.  Come 
to  Villette  later  on.  Maud  and  the  girls  and  Clithy 
could  join  us  too.  I'll  have  a  month  first  of  all,  alone 
except  for  Vicky.  I'll  give  the  closest  attention  to  the 
cure,  and  then  perhaps  when  you  arrive  I  may  be  able 
to  sit  up  and  take  notice  and  even  do  a  little  motor- 
ing. .  .  ." 

Accordingly  the  scene  of  this  dwindling  story 
changes  in  Villette-es- Vosges,  a  Ville  d'eaux  in  eastern 
France,  in  the  month  of  August  and  September,  1911. 
Germany  has  spoilt  the  summer  for  all  statesmen,  sol- 
diers and  sailors  by  challenging  the  French  protectorate 
of  Morocco  at  Agadir.  It  is  supposed  by  the  middle 
of  August,  after  Mr.  Lloyd  George's  speech  in  the 
City,  and  after  a  succession  of  "  kraches  "  in  German 
banking  firms,  that  the  Kaiser's  Government  is  hesi- 
tating to  go  the  full  length  of  War:  but  Germany  is 
growling  horribly  because  she  is  realizing  that  her 
financial  arrangements  for  a  war  of  great  dimensions 
are  imperfect,  and  that  she  is  unprepared  with  aircraft 
to  cope  with  the  French  aeroplanes. 

So  she  is  consenting  to  pourparlers  for  the  purpose 
of  ascertaining  the  terms  on  which  she  may  be  bought 
off,  persuaded  to  leave  Agadir,  and  withdraw  a  portion 
of  the  army  she  is  crowding  into  Alsace-Lorraine. 

Villette-es- Vosges  is  well  suited  for  the  work  of  the 


422     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

old  diplomacy.  It  is,  to  begin  with,  a  Ville  d'eaux; 
and  in  the  eighteenth,  nineteenth,  and  early  twentieth 
centuries,  statesmen  who  were  negotiating  treaties  and 
alliances  or  resolving  problems  which  threatened  war, 
usually  met  at  some  gay  place  near  their  frontiers 
where  they  could,  under  the  guise  of  "  taking  the 
waters,"  carry  on  their  conversations  with  one  another 
and  draft  protocols  of  conspiracy  or  of  agreement. 
Consequently,  in  late  August  and  early  September, 
1911,  Villette  was  unusually  thronged:  not  only  by  its 
accustomed  clientele  of  middle-aged  invalids  trying  to 
combat  all  manner  of  diseases  for  which  its  springs 
were  efficacious,  but  also  by  their  demoiselle  s-d-maner, 
their  gawky  boys  and  bread-and-butter,  pigtailed  girls, 
playing  tennis,  croquet,  and  crowding  into  the  cinemas 
while  their  parents  sip  and  bathe  and  undergo  massage 
sous  I'cau;  by  wicked  gamblers,  obvious  adventurers, 
demure  cocottes  (needing  a  month's  repose  and  a  re- 
duction of  their  figures)  ;  and  by  European  statesmen 
trying  to  look  like  tourists.  The  German  diplomatists 
have  dressed  and  hatted  themselves  to  resemble  the 
Frenchman  of  caricature;  the  French  ministers  and 
ex-ministers  are  out-doing  the  average  English  gentle- 
man in  bluff  "  sports  "  costumes ;  and  there  are  Rus- 
sians and  Austrians  too  quaint  for  words,  a  pouffer  de 
rire,  as  Sibyl  says;  with  such  weeping  whiskers,  such 
forked  beards,  such  frock-coats  in  the  early  morning 
and  such  tall  hats  as  you  never  saw,  except  in  pictures 
of  Society  in  Paris  under  the  Second  Empire. 

These  diplomatists  foregather  in  the  theatrically 
beautiful  park  with  its  swan-pools,  its  canalized  river, 
its  groves  and  bosquets,  pavilions,  tea-houses,  summer- 
houses,  chalets,  kiosques  of  newspapers  and  salacious 
novels,  open-air  orchestras,  croquet-lawns,  and  tennis- 
courts.  Or  if  the  problem  is  very  grave,  and  excited 
speech  should  not  be  audible  nor  gesticulations  visible 


THE  END  OF  SIBYL  423 

to  prowling  journalists,  they  stroll  away  to  the  race- 
course, to  the  golf  links. 

It  is  the  glorious  summer  of  1911,  when  there  was 
little  rain  between  the  beginning  of  June  and  the  end 
of  September.  Nevertheless,  if  you  should  weary  of 
the  heat  or  if  there  should  be  a  sudden  shower  you  have 
a  long  cool  arcade  of  tempting  shops,  a  Grand  Guignol, 
and  the  necessary  retreats  —  on  a  large  scale  —  for 
those  who  are  summarily  affected  by  the  cathartic  action 
of  the  waters,  especially  that  very  potent  Source  Salee, 
which  is  never  mentioned  without  respect,  except  where 
it  is  the  foundation  of  Rabelaisian  stories.  The  me- 
dicinal springs  are  housed  in  temples  of  great  archi- 
tectural beauty.  The  town  of  pleasure,  with  its  eight 
or  nine  hotels,  rises  in  terraces  that  survey  the  park  - 
not  long  ago  a  forest  in  which  wolves  roamed  in  winter 
time.  New  Villette  contains  a  theatre,  a  Club  dcs 
Strangers  with  gambling  rooms,  a  Salle  de  lecture,  a 
Concert  Hall,  an  Eglise  Anglic ane,  and  a  Catholic 
church,  a  post-office,  doctors'  houses  and  laboratories, 
and  the  necessary  usines  and  garages.  A  mile  away  is 
the  real  Villette,  a  common-place  Lorraine  town  of 
purely  agricultural  interests,  turning  its  back,  so  to 
speak,  on  the  adjoining  health  resort  which  has  made 
its  name  famous. 

In  the  arcade  is  a  large  black  notice-board,  whereon 
besides  local  notices  are  pinned  the  Havas  telegrams. 
Hither,  during  one  critical  week,  comes  a  throng  of 
anxious  readers.  Is  it  to  be  peace  or  War?  Will 
Germany  be  satisfied  with  French  Congo  and  give  up 
Morocco?  Should  we  pack  to-night  and  leave  before 
Mother  has  completed  her  cure,  in  case  mobilization 
upsets  the  trains?  Will  my  husband  be  called  up? 
What  will  happen  to  my  boy? 

Sibyl,  lying  on  her  comfortably-sloped  invalid  chair 
in  the  verandah  of  the  Pavilion  des  Dejeuners,  opines 


424     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

the  Germans  must  be  perfect  beasts  to  upset  every  one 
like  this,  and  all  over  some  place  on  the  Sahara  coast 
where  there  are  just  a  few  verminous  Moors.  She  is 
not  in  favour  of  anarchism,  but  she  really  does  wish 
some  one  would  assassinate  the  Kaiser.  .  .  . 

Roger  looks  grave  and  essays  the  hopeless  task  of 
defending  Germany.  "It  is  all  this  mania  for  '  Em- 
pires across  the  Seas.'  Germany  gets  mad  when  our 
Empire,  the  French  Empire,  the  Russian  Empire  each 
year  get  bigger,  while  she  is  prevented  everywhere  from 
expanding ,  etc.,  etc." 

Victoria  Masham  hazards  the  conjecture :  "  //  only 
the  dear  Queen  were  alive!  She  would  soon.  .  .  ." 

Sibyl  interrupts :  "  My  dear  Vicky,  you  must  look 
facts  in  the  face.  Queen  Victoria  would  now  be  92. 
She  would  not  be  of  much  use  at  that  age  .  .  .  See! 
There  is  obviously  our  Foreign  Minister  .  .  .  dis- 
guised with  smoked  glasses,  but  you  can't  mistake  his 
nose.  I  think  he's  so  good-looking.  .  .  .  And  there 
is  young  Hawk  of  the  F.O.  He's  just  been  sent  to 
Brussels.  I  hear  the  Villierses  are  expected  to-mor- 
row. That  man  in  the  straw  hat  and  the  cricketing 
flannels  is  Monsieur  Viviani,  and  the  handsome  old  lion 
with  the  grey  mane  is  Leon  Bourgeois.  The  tight- 
trousered  man  you'd  take  for  a  '  booky  '  is  Count  Pa- 
lastro  —  and  there's  no  mistaking  that  stuffed  figure  of 
the  last  century,  in  a  stove-pipe  hat,  a  buttoned-up 
frock-coat,  and  pointed  whiskers :  that's  Polanoff  of  the 
Russian  Foreign  Office.  We  saw  him  when  we  were 
in  Japan.  ...  '  Whithersoever  the  carcass  is,  there 
are  the  eagles  gathered  together.'  ' 

Rogers  "  I  suppose  the  carcass  is  the  unhappy  peo- 
ples of  Europe?  " 

Sibyl:  "  I  suppose  so.  Vicky,  dear.  Go  and  have 
breakfast  at  the  hotel  this  morning.  D'you  mind? 
Maud  has  taken  off  the  two  girls  to  some  violent  sports' 
competition,  and  Clithy  has  motored  over  to  Dom- 


THE  END  OF  SIBYL  425 

remy."  (To  Roger)  :  "He  is  studying  local  colour 
for  the  libretto  of  an  opera  on  Joan  of  Arc.  His 
great  clou  —  if  he  can  only  bring  it  off  —  is  the  last 
scene.  Joan  of  Arc,  while  bound  to  the  stake  and  en- 
circled with  flames,  sings  a  scena  of  the  fireworks  kind. 
Clithy  says  it  would  be  natural  under  the  circumstances. 
He  thinks  if  they  can  devise  some  kind  of  asbestos  shift 
for  the  prima  donna  and  the  usual  chemical  flames  that 
don't  burn  much  it  could  be  arranged.  .  .  ."  (To 
Vicky)  :  "  I  want  Roger  all  to  myself  this  morning. 
We  are  going  to  have  our  breakfast  together,  here,  in 
case  events  call  him  to  sterner  duties.  ..."  (Vicky 
acquiesces  with  a  good  grace  —  in  her  new  transforma- 
tion to  which  a  little  more  grey  has  been  added,  she 
looks  surprisingly  well,  and  younger  than  Sibyl,  though 
she  is  ten  years  older). 

A  pause.  The  waiter  lays  the  table  between  them 
for  Roger's  dejeuner  a  la  fourchette.  He  is  accus- 
tomed to  preparing  Sibyl's  special  dietary  and  arranges 
for  that  also.  He  is  a  pleasant- faced  man,  deeply  de- 
ploring "  le  peu  de  progres  que  fait  M'ame  la 
Baronne.  .  .  ." 

Sibyl:  "  What  a  scene  for  a  dying  woman  to  be 
looking  at !  " 

Roger:     "Sibyl!     Don't  be  so  lugubrious.  .  .  ." 

Sibyl:  "Why?  Do  you  suppose  I  don't  pretty 
well  know  my  own  condition?  I  am  dying  slowly  of 
cancer,  what  the  doctors  call  '  un  lent  deperissement.' 
I  expect  this  is  what  Mother  died  of  later  in  life.  The 
doctors  would  be  ready  enough  to  operate  again  if 
there  was  any  chance.  ...  As  it  is,  they  know  it  is 
more  merciful  to  let  me  linger  out  my  few  remaining 
weeks  or  months  than  submit  me  to  the  shock  of  an 
operation  which  might  kill  me  at  once.  I  may  live  to 
October,  Dr.  Perigord  thinks.  Or  he  puts  it  more 
pleasantly :  '  Vers  le  mois  d'Octobre  nous  saurons  oui 
ou  non,  si  la  guerison  de  M'ame  la  Baronne  s'effectuera. 


426     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

Les  eaux  de  Villette  operent  parfois  des  miracles: 
esperons  tou jours.'  .  .  .  And  so  on.  ...  I  don't 
suffer  much  pain  —  as  yet.  When  it  comes  on  they'll 
put  me  under  morphia.  I  shall  stay  here  till  this  po- 
litical crisis  is  over  or  the  fine  weather  begins  to  break. 
Then  Clithy  will  motor  me  to  Calais  and  from  Dover 
to  Engledene.  Engledene  will  be  the  best  place  to  die 
at.  And,  of  course,  remember,  I  want  to  be  buried  at 
Aldermaston,  near  Lucy  —  and  near  where  you'll  be 
laid  some  day  —  unless  you  marry  again,  which  I 
should  hardly  think  you'll  do.  I  shall  have  a  perfect 
right  to  occupy  a  small  space  in  Aldermaston  church- 
yard, because  I'm  a  parishioner.  I  bought  the  farm 
that  father  so  ridiculously  mismanaged  and  that  you 
made  so  prosperous.  I've  left  it  in  my  will  to  my 
brother  Gerry,  as  some  compensation  for  having  taken 
no  notice  of  him  since  I  got  married.  .  .  .  But,  as  I 
said  before,  what  a  scene!  Not  even  your  beloved 
Happy  Valley  could  better  those  flowers  in  the  urns 
and  vases  and  borders  and  parterres  —  those  scarlet 
geraniums,  scarlet  cannas,  scarlet  salvias,  and  scarlety- 
crimson  Lobelia  cardinalis.  We  grow  them  at  Engle- 
dene, but  they're  nothing  like  these.  And  the  helio- 
trope, and  ageratum  .  .  .  and  those  blue  salvias  and 
orange  calceolarias.  I  know  it's  rather  vulgar,  but  the 
whole  effect  is  superbly  staged;  don't  you  think 
so  ?  .  .  .  . 

"  And  the  women's  dresses.  Many  of  them,  of 
course,  are  mannequins,  just  showing  off  for  the  Paris 
shops.  And  then  to  see  pass  by  all  the  celebrated  if 
over- rated  people  you've  heard  so  much  about,  just  as 
though  they  were  well-made-up  supers  on  the  stage. 
And  the  music  of  those  alternate  orchestras.  .  .  and 
such  African  sunlight  .  .  .  and  .  .  .  you  next  to 
me.  .  .  ." 

Roger:     "  Look  here,  if  you  talk  so  much  I  shan't 


THE  END  OF  SIBYL  427 

wonder  you  get  weaker  instead  of  stronger.     Eat  up 
your  breakfast  and  drink  your  milk." 

Sibyl:  "  I  will.  But  I  must  talk  to  you.  I  shall 
soon  be  silenced  for  ever.  .  .  ." 

Roger:  "  So  shall  I,  when  my  time  comes.  So  will 
every  one.  You  don't  give  yourself  a  chance,  talking 
in  this  morbid  way.  The  doctors  are  often  wrong. 
Remember  the  case  of  Lady  Waterford  ?  " 

Sibyl:     "Blanchie?" 

Roger:  "  Yes.  ...  A  good  soaking  in  Villette 
water  may  get  rid  of  all  your  trouble  and  some  day  you 
may  be  weeping  over  me  as  I  lie  dying  of  Bright's 
disease." 

Sibyl  (not  paying  much  attention)  :  "  Roger!  Do 
you  think  there  is  going  to  be  War?  " 

Roger:  "Not  this  time.  Look  there!  D'you  see 
those  gardes  champetres  in  that  green  uniform?" 

Sibyl:  "That  nice-looking  man,  with  the  blond 
moustaches  ?  " 

Roger:  "  Yes,  and  that  ugly-looking  fellow  with 
the  red  nose.  Well:  a  week  ago  they  mysteriously 
vanished,  and  I  asked  what  had  become  of  them.  I 
was  told  they  had  joined  up  ...  the  Reserve,  you 
know.  Now  they're  back  again.  That  shows  the 
Germans  and  French  have  come  to  terms.  The  War  is 
partie  remise  —  this  year  —  but  it's  certain  to  come, 
unless  Germany  can  be  squared.  Remains  to  be  seen 
what  she  wants  and  what  we  can  afford  to  give.  .  .  ." 

A  pause.  Sibyl  eats  a  little  food  and  sips  her  milk. 
Roger  finishes  his  breakfast  and  lights  a  cigarette. 

Sibyl:  "  Do  you  think  there  can  be  any  survival 
after  death?" 

Roger:  "How  can  /  tell?  Who  knows  anything 
about  it?  Not  even  Edison  or  Marconi.  And  they 
come  nearest  .  .  ." 

Sibyl:     "  I  mean,  of  course,  our  minds,  our  intelli- 


428     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

gence,  our  love.  Our  poor  diseased  bodies  simply  dis- 
solve and  are  redistributed  and  worked  up  again.  But 
the  personality  we  have  created  in  our  brains?"  .  .  . 
(takes  a  cigarette  from  Roger  and  smokes  it) .  "  Talk- 
ing of  personality,  isn't  it  extraordinary  how  that  can 
be  affected  through  our  stomachs;  chemically,  so  to 
speak  ?  You  saw  that  woman  in  the  dark  green  dress, 
who  waved  to  me  just  now?  Recognize  her?" 
(Roger  shakes  his  head).  .  .  "  That  is  Cecilia  Bos- 
worth,  the.  Marchioness  of  Bosworth,  quite  the  proudest 
woman  in  the  Three  kingdoms  —  enough  in  herself  to 
provoke  a  middle-class  revolution.  Her  husband's  re- 
mote ancestor  was  a  by-blow  of  the  Plantagenets,  a 
natural  son  of  '  false  fleeting  Clarence.'  lie  went  over 
to  that  usurper — I've  always  spoken  up  for  Richard 
the  Third  —  that  usurper,  Henry  the  Seventh,  at  the 
battle  of  Bosworth,  and  so  was  created  Earl  of  Bos- 
worth,  and  afterwards  Elizabeth  made  his  grandson  a 
marquis.  Well,  even  you,  as  an  African  hermit,  must 
have  heard  of  that  woman's  insolence  in  Society?  She 
even  mocked  at  the  l\oyal  Family  and  said  her  husband 
—  a  perfect  oaf  —  was  more  Plantadge  than  they  were 
and  the  rightful  king.  .  .  .  She  wanted  Prince  Eddy 
to  marry  her  daughter  and  make  things  come  right." 
(A  pause  .  .  .  smokes).  .  . 

"  Well,  when  she  came  here  six  weeks  ago,  nobody 
was  good  enough  to  mix  with  her;  she  went  round 
blighting  us  all.  My  doctor  said  it  was  all  due  to 
liver  and  he'd  soon  cure  her.  He  put  her  on  to  La 
Source  Salee —  and  a  slice  of  melon  afterwards. 
And,  my  dear,  she  went  through  agonies,  I  believe.  I 
used  to  hear  her  shrieking  as  she  passed  along  the 
corridor.  .  .  . 

"  But  it's  cured  her.  See  what  a  pleasant  nod  she 
gave  me  just  now?  And  there  she  is,  talking  to  those 
very  pretty  girls  —  and  their  father's  only  a  Leeds 
manufacturer. 


THE  END  OF  SIBYL  429 

"  Well,  how  do  you  work  that  problem  out  ?  " 

Roger:  ''Give  it  up!  .  .  .  But  by  the  look  in  your 
eyes,  I  should  say  you've  got  the  beginning  of  a  tem- 
perature. Let  me  wheel  you  back  to  the  Hotel  and 
call  for  Sophie.  Then  if  you  are  good  and  obedient 
and  get  an  after-breakfast  nap,  I  will  come  at  three  and 
take  you  and  Vicky  out  for  a  very  gentle  motor 
drive.  .  .  ." 

Sibyl  submits.  The  waiter  assists  with  the  chair  till 
it  is  out  of  the  intricacies  of  the  approach  to  the  Break- 
fast Pavilion.  Roger  draws  it  through  the  gay  throng. 
The  church  bells  of  all  denominations  are  clanging  in 
carillons,  either  because  it  is  Sunday  or  because  Peace 
—  this  time  —  has  been  definitely  assured  by  an  ex- 
change of  signatures.  A  few  people  raise  their  hats 
or  wave  hands  to  Sibyl,  though  she  is  semi-disguised 
in  smoked  glasses  and  a  diaphanous  veil ;  and  numerous 
men  nod  to  Colonel  Brentham :  who,  panting,  draws 
the  wheeled  chair  up  to  the  perron  of  the  hotel. 

Here  there  is  a  pause  while  Sophie  is  sent  for.  Then 
the  disentanglement  of  the  sick  woman  from  the  chair 
and  from  shawls,  and  her  slow  walk,  supported  by 
Roger  and  her  maid,  to  the  ground  floor  rooms  where 
a  white-capped  nurse  receives  her. 

Roger  went  to  Germany  at  the  end  of  September, 
when  Sibyl  was  being  taken  back  to  England  by  her 
son.  He  spent  six  weeks  lecturing  the  Germans  on  the 
advisability  of  joining  Britain  and  France  in  a  world- 
wide understanding.  His  lectures  were  politely  for- 
bidden on  Prussian  territory,  which  made  South  Ger- 
many all  the  more  eager  to  hear  him.  And  when  he 
left  for  England  at  the  beginning  of  November,  it  was 
with  the  assurance  that  a  German  representative  depu- 
tation would  come  to  England  in  the  spring  of  1912  to 
promote  an  Anglo-German  understanding. 

On  reaching  London,  however,  he  learnt  that  Sibyl 


430     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

had  died  two  days  previously,  at  Engledene.  In  the 
last  weeks  of  her  agony  she  had  been  much  under 
morphia.  Before  she  reached  that  stage  she  had  in- 
sisted with  Maud  and  Vicky  that  Roger  was  not  to  be 
bothered  by  bad  reports  of  her  condition,  as  he  was 
engaged  in  doing  what  he  believed  to  be  the  right  thing. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

ALL   ENDS    IN    THE    HAPPY    VALLEY 

COLONEL  BRENTHAM'S  anticipations  of  the 
Millennium  to  be  achieved  by  the  adjustment  of 
colonial  ambitions  were  not  to  be  realized.  On  the 
28th  of  June,  1914,  the  heir  to  the  Austro-Hungarian 
throne  was  assassinated  in  the  Bosnian  capital.  Mau- 
rice Brentham,  meeting  his  brother  the  same  day  out- 
side the  Travellers'  Club,  asked  what  he  thought  of  this 
bolt  from  the  blue. 

"  I  think  very  badly  of  it,"  Roger  replied. 
"  Whether  or  not  the  plot  was  engineered  in  Servia,  it 
is  clear  from  the  sayings  and  antics  of  the  Russian  min- 
ister in  Belgrade  that  Russia  is  egging  on  Servia 
against  Austria  and  using  her  as  a  mask  under  which 
Russia  may  place  herself  athwart  German-Austrian  am- 
bitions in  the  Balkan  peninsula,  and  bar  the  way  to 
Constantinople.  She  is,  in  fact,  challenging  directly 
the  substantial  results  of  our  agreements.  .  .  ." 
"Well,  and  if  she  does,  what  will  happen  then?" 
"  The  Great  War  we  have  been  striving  to  avert." 

When  War  was  declared  on  August  4th,  Brentham 
found  himself  in  the  dilemma  of  many  of  his  able- 
bodied,  disengaged  fellow-countrymen:  what  service 
could  he  render  to  the  British  Empire  at  this  crisis  of 
its  fate?  Like  most  of  us  he  had  a  strong  predilection 
as  to  the  kind  of  service  he  might  best  render.  In  his 
case  it  was  to  proceed  as  quickly  as  possible  to  East 
Africa  and  watch  over  the  fortunes  of  the  Happy  Val- 
ley. John  was  already  in  India  with  his  regiment; 
Ambrose  had  best  remain  at  Cambridge  unless  there 

431 


432      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

was  anything  like  Universal  service ;  Maud  would  take 
up  hospital  work  and  her  nieces  could  help  her. 

He  therefore  proceeded  to  offer  his  services  to  the 
Secretary  of  State  for  the  Colonies.  If  Africa  could 
not  be  kept  out  of  the  War  area  —  as  he  had  at  first 
hoped  —  then,  if  we  did  not  occupy  German  East  Af- 
rica, the  Germans  would  soon  proceed  to  invade  our 
adjacent  possessions:  in  short,  a  terrible  struggle  was 
about  to  take  place  for  supremacy  in  the  Dark  Conti- 
nent between  Britain,  France,  and  Belgium  on  the  one 
side  and  Germany  on  the  other.  In  such  a  struggle, 
surely  his  qualities  as  geographer,  linguist,  and  a  per- 
son of  great  local  influence  ought  to  be  of  value  in  the 
East  African  campaign? 

The  Colonial  Office  replied  coldly  that  it  had  handed 
over  the  whole  question  of  attack  and  defence  in  East 
Africa  to  the  War  Office.  To  the  War  Office  he  there- 
fore repaired  one  very  warm  day  at  the  end  of  August. 
With  the  greatest  difficulty  he  obtained  access  to  the 
Secretary  of  State  for  War,  then  the  most  powerful 
person  in  the  kingdom.  He  faced  those  "  desert  eyes  " 
like  the  optics  of  a  harpy  eagle,  and  made  a  stammer- 
ing, voluble  proffer  of  his  services,  which  gradually 
slackened  under  the  stare  and  the  silence.  When  he 
paused  to  invite  a  reply,  the  great  man  interjected: 
"  How  old  are  you?  " 

"  Fifty-six,  Sir." 

"Much  too  old.  .  .  .  Couldn't  stand  .  .  .  strain 
of  campaign.  .  .  .  Besides  ...  all  arranged  with 
Indian  War  Department.  .  .  .  They  mightn't  like 
their  Intelligence  Division  .  .  .  interfered  with.  .  .  . 
No  doubt  contingency  long  foreseen  .  .  .  plan  of  cam- 
paign cut-and-dried.  .  .  .  Sorry.  .  .  .  We  must 
make  use  of  you  elsewhere.  .  .  .  Send  you  America 
.  .  .  or  recruiting,  p'raps.  .  .  .  Scotland,  Ireland, 
Canada.  Let  you  know  later.  .  .  .  Good  morn- 
ing.  .  .  ." 


ALL  ENDS  IN  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY     433 

Roger,  fearful  of  being  caught  in  the  machine  as 
some  little  wheel  or  cog  of  no  importance,  lay  low, 
considered,  inquired  and  made  his  plans,  thinking  of 
nothing  but  how  to  reach  and  save  the  Happy  Valley. 
Passports  and  visas  were  still  matters  of  trifling  im- 
portance. The  direct  route  to  East  Africa  was  closed 
to  him ;  righting  had  already  begun,  rather  disastrously 
for  the  British.  But  the  Belgians  were  preparing  for 
a  great  war-effort  against  German  East  Africa.  Roger 
made,  his  way  to  Antwerp  .  .  .  saw  the  Belgian  Min- 
ister for  the  Congo,  saw  the  grave  and  courteous  young 
King  .  .  .  was  given  permission  to  accompany  the 
Belgian  forces  assembling  on  Tanganyika.  .  .  . 

Then :  picture  him  having  reached  the  mouth  of  the 
Congo,  late  on  in  1914  ...  a  little  rusty  for  this 
adventure  in  Equatorial  Africa.  No  one  with  him  as 
assistant,  servant,  valet.  His  son  John  had  been  as  far 
back  as  the  preceding  July  marked  down  for  service 
with  the  first  Indian  contingent  which  would  in  case  of 
war  be  dispatched  across  the  Indian  Ocean  to  take  part 
in  the  mismanaged  attack  on  Tanga.  Can  you  picture 
Brentham  in  those  dreary  weeks  of  waiting  at  Boma, 
the  Congo  capital  —  hothouse  heat,  mosquitoes,  sand, 
dense  forest,  rancid  smell  of  palm  oil  —  unutterably 
lonely,  asking  himself  torturingly  "  whether  he  had 
done  the  right  thing  "  ?  Ought  he  not  to  have  stayed 
at  home,  fought  in  Flanders?  Looked  after  Ambrose, 
waited  for  orders  from  Lord  Kitchener  ?  Was  he  ab- 
solutely single-minded  in  his  attachment  to  the  Happy 
Valley?  Had  he  chosen  the  right  way  to  get  there 
quickest  ? 

At  last  they  were  off  up-river  to  take  the  train  to 
Stanley  Pool.  The  Belgian  officers  with  whom  he 
travelled  were  one  and  all  nice  fellows,  bons  com- 
pagnons,  intelligent,  respectful  of  this  grave  English 
colonel's  knowledge  of  Africa;  but  a  little  puzzled 
qitand  meme  at  his  Quixotry,  a  little  reserved.  "  II 


434      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

parait  qu'il  a  vecu  longtemps  avec  les  Bodies,"  he 
overheard  one  of  them  saying  in  the  mess,  as  he  was 
sauntering  in.  It  seemed  to  convey  a  doubt  as  to  his 
good  faith.  ...  At  Leopoldville,  he  encountered  a 
stately-looking  Negro  in  a  familiar  costume  —  long 
white  kanzu,  small  white  open-work  skull-cap  —  speak- 
ing in  Swahili.  With  what  joy  he  recognized  that  once 
familiar  tongue  can  only  be  appreciated  by  those  who 
have  known  the  nostalgia  of  East  Africa.  He  ad- 
dressed the  man  in  Kiswahili  and  was  greeted  with  re- 
spect and  interest.  A  bargain  was  struck  with  his  em- 
ployer, and  the  man,  Omari  bin  Brahimu,  originally  a 
boy  recruit  for  Stanley,  entered  Brentham's  service,  to 
accompany  him  to  East  Africa.  Half  the  misery  of 
the  adventure  was  now  over.  Here  was  a  potential 
nurse  in  sickness,  an  efficient  valet,  a  packer,  steward, 
if-need-be  cook,  gun-bearer,  counsellor,  interpreter,  and 
ever  present  help  in  trouble.  .  .  . 

Colonel  Brentham  soon  showed  the  Belgians  he  was 
not  there  as  an  encumbrance,  as  a  tiresome  elderly 
guest.  His  knowledge  of  Bantu  tongues  enabled  him 
to  pick  up  a  smattering  of  Bangala,  the  lingua  franca 
of  the  Congolese  soldiery.  He  worked  in  his  shirt- 
sleeves and  in  football  shorts  at  every  emergency,  knew 
something  about  steamer  engines,  shot  for  the  pot, 
drilled  recruits,  and  evidently  knew  the  Germans'  po- 
sition and  resources  thoroughly.  By  the  time  the  swell- 
ing contingent  of  reinforcements  had  reached  Stanley 
Falls  he,  was  voted  the  nicest  Englishman  —  point  de 
morgue,  simple  et  instruit,  bon  gargon  jusqu'au  bout 
dcs  angles  —  they  had  ever  met.  Between  Stanley 
Falls  and  Tanganyika  he  was  very  ill  and  nearly  died 
of  black-water  fever;  but  pulled  through,  thanks  to 
Omari's  nursing,  and  reached  Ujiji  a  yellow  spectre, 
after  the  Belgians  had  in  several  actions  on  the  lake 
and  on  shore  gained  possession  of  Tanganyika.  They 
had  been  marvellously  helped  by  a  naval  contingent 


ALL  ENDS  IN  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY     435 

sent  out  by  the  British  Admiralty  through  Nyasaland. 
It  was  a  joy  which  conduced  to  Brentham's  recovery 
to  meet  the  brave,  jolly,  resourceful  British  naval  offi- 
cers and  picked  seamen.  In  some  way  it  righted  his 
own  position.  He  fe.lt  less  a  lonely  Don  Quixote,  a 
solitary  specimen  of  the  British  allies  of  Belgium. 

The  year  1915  had  been  the  nadir  of  his  life.  Cut 
off  from  all  news  —  he  was  not  to  know  for  another 
year  that  his  sons  were  both  dead,  John,  shot  through 
the  head  in  a  maize  plantation  outside  Tanga,  and  Am- 
brose, who  had  enlisted  a  month  after  his  father's  de- 
parture, blown  to  pieces  by  a  shell  at  Ypres;  not  to 
know  how  his  sister  and  his  daughters  were  faring; 
whether  the  British  Empire  still  stood  firm,  and  what 
people  said  or  thought  about  his  own  disappearance. 
He  was  often  sick,  tired,  lonely,  with  little  to  read, 
and  his  thoughts  a  torture  to  him;  for  they  dwelt  on 
the  remembering  of  happier  things.  He  wished  at 
times  he  might  have  in  humdrum  daily  life  the  delu- 
sions that  came  to  him  in  dreams  or  in  attacks  of  fever ; 
that  Lucy  was  once  more  by  his  side,  that  Sibyl  had 
sat  by  him,  that  Maud  or  Maurice  or  Mrs.  Stott  had 
come  into  his  wretched  palm-leaf  hut. 

From  Ujiji  to  Tabora  he  fought  alongside  the  Bel- 
gian Negro  army,  feeling  every  step  he  took  eastward 
more  and  more  at  home.  He  nearly  cried  with  joy  at 
finding  himself  once  more  among  the  Wanyamwezi  and 
actually  recognizing  among  those  who  came  forward 
to  offer  their  services  against  the  Germans  a  few  of  the 
men  who  had  been  his  soldier-porters  in  bygone  days. 

At  Tabora  he  heard  disquieting  news  about  the 
Happy  Valley.  It  was  reported  that  the  British-Boer 
army  under  General  Smuts,  which  had  already  taken 
the  southern  slopes  of  Kilimanjaro  from  the  Germans, 
was  about  to  start  —  had  started,  in  fact  —  on  a  bold 
diversion.  Led  by  one  or  two  English  sportsmen,  they 


436     THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

were,  evidently  making  for  Lake  Manyara  and  the 
Happy  Valley,  with  the  intention  of  cutting  the  Tan- 
ganyika railway  in  Ugogo  and  outflanking  the  German 
forces  in  the  coast-belt.  It  was  a  bold  scheme  that 
only  a  great  general  would  have  thought  of.  The 
story,  he  thought,  must  be  true.  The  stroke  was  im- 
posed on  our  strategy  by  the  geography  of  the  coun- 
try  

After  days  and  nights  of  meditation  and  many  dis- 
cussions with  Wanyamwezi  headmen,  guides,  and  dis- 
armed Askari  (who  had  transferred  their  allegiance 
from  the,  Germans  to  the  Allies  with  the  greatest  will- 
ingness), Brentham  sought  the  general  commanding 
the  Belgian  forces  at  Tabora  and  expounded  his  plan 
and  the  reasons  for  his  plan. 

Sanction  was  obtained.  Duly  furnished  with  papers 
establishing  his  identity  and  his  position  as  an  intelli- 
gence officer  serving  with  the  Belgian  forces,  Roger 
started  at  the  head  of  a  hundred  picked  Wanyamwezi, 
with  as  little  baggage  as  possible.  He  felt  now  primed 
for  any  hardship,  any  privation,  when  a  certain  num- 
ber of  days'  marching  would  bring  him  back  "  home," 
as  he  instinctively  framed  it  in  his  mind.  Neverthe- 
less, in  case  strength  should  give  out  he  purchased  two 
donkeys  for  himself  and  Omari,  who  now  chiefly  filled 
the  role  of  cook,  and  therefore  must  not  be  walked  off 
his  legs. 

Then  they  plunged  into  the  untracked  wilderness,  the 
least  known  part  of  German  East  Africa,  between 
northern  Unyamwezi  and  the  crater  region  at  the  head 
of  Lake  Manyara,  where  the  British  forces  would  prob- 
ably impinge  on  the  Happy  Valley.  Oh,  that  he,  might 
arrive  there  in  time  to  prevent  the  accidental  or  needless 
destruction  of  priceless  experimental  machinery,  and 
the  outcome  of  researches  undertaken  in  the  general 
interests  of  the  world ;  and  intervene  possibly  between 
the  harmless,  bewildered  natives  and  a  soldiery  which 


ALL  ENDS  IN  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY     437 

might  not  understand  them !  At  first  his  caravan  trav- 
elled thirty  miles  a  day  in  a  swinging  stride  through 
a  cultivated  country,  a  country  of  good  roads,  rest- 
houses  and  ordered  prosperity.  Thence  it  passed 
north-east  and  east  into  a  trackless,  little-populated  re- 
gion, a  no-man's  land,  illimitable  plains  and  tablelands 
of  thin  grass,  dotted  at  rare  intervals  with  granite 
boulders,  blocks  and  upright  menhirs  of  naked  stone, 
as  yet  the  undeciphered  hieroglyphics  of  a  chapter  in 
African  geology.  The  dry  watercourses  sheltered 
clumps  of  ragged,  lank,  thin-stemmed  Hyphsene  palms, 
and  strange-looking  euphorbias.  The  open  country 
swarmed  with  game  —  countless  zebras,  herds  of  yel- 
low hartebeest,  red-brown  impala,  black-belted,  golden- 
yellow,  white-bellied  Grant's  gazelle,  family  parties  of 
twenty  or  thirty  black-and-white  and  grey  ostriches, 
blue-grey,  black-maned  gnus  (almost  as  numerous  as 
the  zebras),  and  troops  of  blotched  giraffes  like  run- 
away telegraph  poles  as  they  fled  with  uniform  trot 
before  his  expedition.  Rhinoceroses,  larger  than  any 
Roger  had  ever  beheld,  charged  his  caravan,  but  more 
as  an  idle  sport  than  with  malign  intent.  ...  "  What 
a  pity,"  thought  Roger,  after  successful  evasions  of 
these  snorting  bulks,  "  we  could  not  domesticate  these 
monsters  and  turn  their  strength  to  account  in  warfare? 
A  rhino  cavalry  regiment  would  carry  away  all  the 
enemy's  wire  entanglements  and  prove  as  useful  as 
armoured  cars." 

Only  stopping  an  hour  here  and  an  hour  there  to 
secure  meat  for  his  caravan  or  incidentally  to  give  some 
too  persistent  rhino  its  quietus,  he  pressed  on  till  his 
expedition  entered  country  covered  by  his  recollections 
—  the  basin  of  a  former  vast  sheet  of  water,  ancillary, 
perhaps,  to  the  Victoria  Nyanza,  now  reduced  to  the 
furrowed  courses  of  half -dry  rivers  and  a  long  salt 
lake,  its  shores  and  portions  of  its  surface  sparkling 
with  salt  crystals  in  the  sunshine,  and  its  surcharged 


438      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

waters  of  salts  and  sodas  in  solution,  a  milky  blue. 
There  were  people  in  this  wilderness  of  broad  valleys 
and  abrupt  escarpments,  tribes  already  known  to  Roger, 
primitive  Bushman-like  folk,  speaking  languages  full 
of  clicks,  going  stark  naked,  without  domestic  animals 
or  agriculture,  nomad  hunters  with  bows  and  arrows, 
straying  from  the  culture  of  fifty  thousand  years  ago 
into  awakened  Africa :  where  white  nations  were  fight- 
ing for  predominance  with  gas  and  steel,  aeroplane  and 
armoured  car. 

At  last  he  sighted  familiar  ridges  and  entered  remem- 
bered ravines  and  noble  forests,  and  followed  streams 
of  fresh,  cold  water.  There  were  now  visible  many 
signs  of  the  handiwork,  the  energy  of  civilized  man. 
At  the  same  time  they  encountered  the  first  fugitives 
fleeing  from  Iraku  before  the  coming  of  a  war  so  ter- 
rible that  there  was  nothing  like  it  in  the  black  man's 
legends  or  imagination :  flying  rafts  in  the  air  hurling 
bombs,  the  bursting  of  shells,  the  leaden  hail  of  ma- 
chine-gunfire. 

Brentham's  arrival  on  the  scene  coincided  with  some 
suspension  of  hostilities;  at  any  rate,  as  he  hurried  for- 
ward through  the  bungalows,  factories,  and  gardens  of 
Wilhelmshohe,  he  heard  no  artillery;  nothing  more 
war-like  than  the  occasional  popping  of  a  rifle  and  a 
few  shouts.  The  roads,  however,  were  thronged  with 
fugitives  making  for  the  woods,  some  of  whom  greeted 
him  rapturously  as  the  Bwana-mkubwa  returning  to 
his  kingdom,  a  god  emerging  from  a  machine  who 
would  set  everything  right.  Many  of  these  stopped  in 
their  flight,  turned  back  and  followed  his  men.  They 
even  ran  alongside  his  peevish  donkey,  regardless  of 
its  kicks,  strove  to  kiss  a  disengaged  hand,  called  him 
by  his  native  names.  The  pace  of  the  irritated  ass  be- 
came a  trot,  a  canter,  now  they  were  on  well-made 
roads.  Roger  glanced  from  side  to  side,  saw  old 
buildings  he  remembered,  and  new  bungalows  and  fac- 


ALL  ENDS  IN  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY     439 

tories  he  had  never  seen  before.  Several  were  burn- 
ing. Negro  soldiers  in  British  khaki  uniforms  were 
either  attempting  to  stay  the  flames  or  were  frankly 
pillaging  the  houses.  Several  glanced  up  at  him,  ir- 
resolute. He  seemed  a  British  officer  of  high  rank, 
but  not  of  their  regiment;  a  few  saluted;  a  question 
put  here  and  there  elicited  the  fact  that  they  under- 
stood Swahili. 

From  them  he  gathered  that  a  very  large  British 
force  had  reached  Lake  Manyara  from  the  north-east, 
from  the  big  snow  mountains,  guided  by  several  Eng- 
lishmen, one  of  whom  was  called  the  "  Little  Terror  " 
(Kicho  kidogo),  who  had  a  small  army  of  his  own, 
very  fierce  men,  not  in  uniform,  "  washenzi  wabaya."  l 
That  the  German  men  of  the  Happy  Valley  had  fled 
before  the  English  to  some  great  German  stronghold 
in  the  south ;  but  that  the  "  Little  Terror  "  had  been 
told  off  to  search  and  occupy  the  country  west  of  the 
line  of  march,  and  he  was  now  engaged  in  giving  the 
"  washenzi  "  punishment. 

Roger,  scarcely  halting  more  than  a  minute  here  or 
a  minute  there  to  glean  this  information,  rode  eastward 
as  rapidly  as  his  tired  donkey  could  be  urged  to  go. 
The  absolutely  familiar  scenery  was  not  much  altered 
for  the  lapse  of  seven  years.  The  roads  were  even 
smoother  and  neater,  the  hedges  of  dracsena  and  scar- 
let-flowered Erythrina  more  luxuriant.  There  were 
brilliant  flower-gardens  round  the  bungalows.  There 
was  the  Stotts'  former  Mission  station  and  school. 
Beside  it  was  a  new  chapel  of  florid  Gothic  architec- 
ture. 

Dr.  Wiese's  house  and  laboratory.  He  paused,  got 
off  the  donkey,  and  entered  the  front  garden.  There, 
to  greet  him,  was  Dr.  Wiese  himself,  lying  on  his  back 
on  a  bed  of  scarlet  geraniums,  dead,  in  a  pool  of  con- 
gealing blood,  with  a  swarm  of  flies  buzzing  about  his 
1  Wicked  savages. 


440      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

shattered  face.  He  could  see  a  smashed  door,  a  broken 
verandah  post,  and  strewn  papers,  glass  bottles,  odds 
and  ends  of  things  remaining  over  from  a  looting  of 
the  house.  This  was  too  serious  an  episode  to  be 
passed  by  without  investigation.  Omari  had  by  this 
time  come  up.  And  not  far  behind  him  were  the  re- 
turning refugees  and  his  caravan  of  soldier-porters. 
He  strode  up  to  the  dead  man.  Yes,  it  was  Wiese,  the 
physician- friend  of  many  years,  who  had  striven  so 
hard  to  save  Lucy  from  an  insidious  disease.  .  .  . 
Shocking  ...  to  see  him  like  this  after  seven  years! 
If  only  he  had  arrived  yesterday  it  might  not  have  hap- 
pened. He  took  the  shortest  cut  over  flower-beds,  past 
broken-into  aviaries,  trampled  botanic  gardens  with  an 
infinitude  of  labels,  to  the  laboratory,  whence  came  a 
shouting  and  quarrelling. 

In  this  building  there  were  a  few  Nyasaland  soldiers 
in  khaki  and  a  number  of  sinister-looking  Ruga-ruga, 
like  those  who  had  once  been  in  Stolzenberg's  employ. 
Bottles  were  being  smashed  in  the  search  for  brandy, 
strange  fumes  filled  the  air,  irrevocable  damage  was 
doubtless  being  done.  Here  and  there,  thrown  on  one 
side  whilst  they  searched  for  treasure,  were  heaps  of 
slaughtered  turkeys,  peafowl,  Crowned  cranes  and 
guinea-fowl,  which  the  looting  soldiery  had  obtained 
from  the  poultry  yards  and  aviaries  round  about. 

Roger,  possessed  with  a  fury  which  transformed  him 
at  this  stupid  destruction,  shouted  military  commands 
to  the  men  in  khaki  and  in  rags.  Mechanically  they 
dropped  their  booty  and  were  silent.  Some  of  the 
Ruga-ruga  recognized  him  as  the  Bwana-mkubwa  who 
had  once  reigned  here,  and  had  joined  the  "  Wa- 
dachi  "  1  in  investigating  the  "  Terror's  "  death  and 
disappearance.  Cowed  by  his  presence,  they  obeyed 
an  order  to  march  out  of  the  building  and  assemble 
1  Germans. 


ALL  ENDS  IN  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY     441 

with  the  soldiers  in  the  public  square  of  Magara,  there 
to  await  further  orders.  Revolver  in  hand,  and  well 
backed  by  his  determined-looking  Wanyamwczi,  he 
said  :  "  I  will  shoot  any  man  among  you  whom  I  catch 
looting  or  destroying."  Sullenly  they  slunk  away. 

Another  mile's  ride  and  here  he  was  before  his 
former  home,  his  mouth  and  throat  dry  with  apprehen- 
sion. The  formal  garden  in  front  of  the  house  was 
beautifully  neat,  gay  with  flowers,  in  better  order  even 
than  in  his  days.  Up  the  pebbled  path  which  led  to 
the  verandah  and  the  stone  steps  he  walked  with  a 
beating  heart.  Oh,  that  he  should  be  seeing  it  all 
again;  and  oh,  that  Lucy  might  come  out  through  the 
French  windows  with  her  graceful,  rather  languid 
walk,  to  throw  her  arms  around  his  neck  and  say: 
"  Dearest;  dear,  dear  Roger;  back  at  last!  "  Or  that 
even  trusty  sister,  Maud  —  How  was  Maud  faring  ? 
He  had  heard  nothing  of  her  since  a  letter  reached  him 
at  Stanley  Pool,  nearly  two  years  ago  .  .  .  those  terri- 
ble years  of  silence  whilst  he  traversed  Central  Af- 
rica  

But  at  the  rumour  of  his  approach  it  was  neither  his 
living  sister  nor  the  wraith  of  his  dead  wife  that 
emerged  from  the  open  doorway :  it  was  the  sinister 
figure  of  Willowby  Patterne :  like  himself  in  khaki: 
thinner,  yellower,  greyer,  wickeder-looking  than  he  had 
seen  him  ten  or  twelve  years  ago. 

"  Had  a  presentiment  we  should  meet  here,"  said 
Patterne,  trying  with  a  hand  that  shook  to  fix  an  inso- 
lent eyeglass  in  a  bloodshot  eye.  "  Though  no  one 
knew  what  had  become  of  you  since  you  bolted  from 
England  when  the  war  started.  No!  .  .  ."  (as  Roger 
makes  to  advance)  ".  .  .  Stay  \vhere  you  are,  or  I 
shall  have  you  arrested  at  once,  you  .  .  .  you  .  .  . 
German  .  .  .  spy!"  (Roger  takes  his  revolver  out 
of  its  leather  case  and  sees  that  it  is  loaded  and  ready.) 


442      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

"Oh?  I've  got  a  revolver,  too.  If  you  make  the 
slightest  movement  till  I  tell  you  to  go,  and  where  to 
go,  I  shall  shoot." 

At  this  threat,  the  general  purport  of  which  he  un- 
derstands, Omari  bin  Brahimu  steps  in  front  of  his 
master  and  produces  his  revolver.  Seeing  this,  Wil- 
lowby  Patterne  calls  in  a  rather  quavering  voice, 
"  Njooni,  watu  wangu,  upesi ;  yupo  adui !  Upesi !  "  * 
Two  men  come  from  the  back  premises,  look  from  the 
white  devil  pacing  up  and  down  on  the  verandah  to 
the  figures  of  Roger  and  Omari ;  and  then,  with  a 
shout  of  joy,  fling  themselves  on  Roger  —  not  to  arrest 
him  as  Willowby  first  supposes,  and  so  hesitates  to 
shoot,  but  to  kiss  his  hand,  kneel  at  his  feet,  utter  in- 
coherent cries  of  joy,  the  while  Omari  keeps  his  pistol 
steadily  aimed  at  the  "  Little  Terror."  They  are  two 
of  Brentham's  Somali  gun-bearers  of  seven  years  back, 
Yusuf  Ali  and  Ashuro. 

Willowby,  longing  to  shoot  and  kill,  yet  letting  I 
dare  not  wait  upon  I  would,  disquieted  that  none  of 
his  Ruga-ruga  obey  his  frantic  whistling,  decides  to 
make  a  bolt  of  it  and  rally  them  and  the,  Nyasaland 
soldiers,  and  so  make  a  prompt  end  of  Roger  and  the 
Somali  traitors.  (These  men  had  arrived  at  his  sta- 
tion in  Namanga,  hangers-on  of  the  large  and  hetero- 
geneous British  force  which  was  seeking  a  way  across 
the  little-known  region  between  Meru  and  the  Happy 
Valley.  They  told  Patterne  they  had  once  been  em- 
ployed in  Iraku  on  the  Concession  and  offered  to  help 
him  to  show  the  way.  Believing  they  might  be  useful 
for  his  own  purposes  in  laying  hands  on  the  things  he 
sought  for,  he  had  taken  them  on ;  and  here  they  were, 
saluting  his  rival  and  enemy  like  a  demi-god  ...  If 
he  only  got  a  chance  to  get  hold  of  them!  He'd  cut 
the  life  out  of  them  with  a  kiboko!  .  .  .  .) 

Whilst  he  hesitated  whether  to  walk  down  the  steps 

1 "  Come,  my  men,  quick !     Here  is  the  enemy,  quick !  " 


ALL  ENDS  IN  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY     443 

in  a  dignified  way  or  jump  from  the  rails  of  the  veran- 
dah into  the  flower-beds,  his  indecision  was  terminated 
abruptly.  Behind  him  a  woman  shrieked,  and  he  felt 
himself  propelled  by  a  vigorous  push  of  stout  arms 
down  the  stone  steps  and  almost  on  to  the  group  of 
Roger,  Omari  and  the  two  Somalis.  These  might  have 
laid  hold  of  him,  but  a  German  lady,  Frau  Hildebrandt, 
impeded  their  action.  She  unceremoniously  pushed 
Patterne  into  a  parterre  of  petunias,  whilst  she  too 
clasped  Roger's  hands  in  a  frenzied  appeal,  a  rapturous 
greeting.  "It  is  Herr  Brentham!  Ach  lieber  Gott! 
Er  wird  verstehen.  He  will  be  our  salvation.  Ach 
mein  Mann!  Ach  meine  kinder!  Hilf!  Hilf!" 

Patterne  rose  to  his  feet,  ran  over  flower-beds, 
through  or  over  dracaena  hedges  (since  Roger's  men 
blocked  the  garden  gate),  out  of  a  tangle  of  gardens 
and  outhouses,  across  the  green,  to  the  public  square 
and  market-place.  Here  he  found  groups  of  bewil- 
dered, sulky  King's  African  Rifles,  and  his  own  Ruga- 
ruga.  He  had  been  given  an  escort  of  fifty  Negro 
riflemen  when,  three  days  before,  he  had  been  detailed 

—  at  his  own  request,  having  finished  his  job  as  guide 

—  to  "  clear  up  "  Iraku  and  the  European  settlement 
of  Wilhelmshohe,  professing  to  know  every  inch  of  the 
ground.     He  had  been  told,  of  course,  that  unless  re- 
sistance was  offered  there  was  to  be  no  looting;  that 
any  German  women  or  children  were  to  be  allowed  to 
remain  in  their  homes  until  they  could  be  officially  dealt 
with,  and  all  German  men  surrendering  to  be  treated 
humanely  as   prisoners   of   war,   and   marched  under 
escort  to  the  nearest  British  camp.     These  instructions 
he  had  chosen  to  interpret  in  his  own  way  by  killing 
Dr.  Wiese  and  terrorizing  Frau  Hildebrandt  into  find- 
ing him  the  information  of  which  he  was  in  search. 
He  intended,  of  course,  to  make  himself  master  of  the 
Concession,  in  the  hope  that  he  might  be  recognized 
as  owner  after  the  War.     There  would  certainly  be  sev- 


444      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

eral  years  of  confusion  in  which  he  might  rule  here  and 
perhaps  acquire  all  the  wealth  he  wanted 

But  the  arrival  —  the  resurrection  almost  —  of 
Roger  Brentham  had  so  queered  his  plans  that  he  saw 
red.  He  would  assemble  all  the  men  he  could  get  hold 
of  and  make  a  sudden  rush  on  Magara  House,  and 
shoot,  shoot,  shoot  before  Roger's  party  could  put 
themselves  in  a  position  of  defence.  He  vvould  declare 
Roger  to  be  a  traitor  and  a  German  Spy.  Provided 
he  killed  him,  the  fait  accompli  would  not  be  followed 
with  much  of  an  inquiry  at  this  very  critical  time.  .  .  . 

But  his  Ruga-ruga  were  slow  to  respond,  having 
recognized  Roger  as  a  redoubtable  warrior.  And  the 
Nyasaland  regulars  flatly  refused  to  march  to  the  at- 
tack. Patterne  was  not  one  of  their  regular  officers, 
and  they  insisted  that  an  English  Colonel  having  taken 
possession  of  this  country  they  should  all  rejoin  the 
main  army  and  lay  the  case  before  their  commanding 
officer.  So  Patterne  gathered  his  loads  together, 
awoke  his  weary  porters  (who  had  taken  advantage  of 
the  halt  to  gorge  themselves  with  food  after  their  se- 
vere privations)  and  departed  down  the  Valley  in  the 
direction  of  the  rapidly  advancing  armies.  He  felt  he 
could  not  halt  or  eat  or  sleep  till  he  had  taken  vengeance 
on  the  man  who  had  so  persistently  baulked  him;  he 
would  denounce  him  as  a  spy,  as  a  traitor  .  .  .  perhaps 
—  oh  joy !  —  get  him  court-martialled  and  shot ;  at  any 
rate,  collared  and  marched  out  of  East  Africa. 

But  he  never  even  reached  the  head-quarters  of  the 
army  now  entering  Irangi.  Roger,  anticipating  his  in- 
tentions, had  rapidly  written  an  account  of  his  actions 
in  turning  Patterne  out  of  Magara  House,  had  ex- 
plained who  he  was,  the  route  he  had  followed,  and  his 
intention  to  remain  in  charge  of  the  Concession  till  he 
was  ordered  to  leave  it  by  the  proper  authority.  The 
Somalis  travelling  twice  as  quickly  as  Patterne's  safari, 
and  travelling  with  as  much  secrecy  as  speed,  delivered 


ALL  ENDS  IN  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY     445 

the  letter  to  the  nearest  British  officer  in  high  com- 
mand. Some  say  that  on  the  return  journey  they  took 
a  pot  shot  at  Patterne  as  he  was  halting  to  whip  some 
of  his  laggard  porters ;  others  that  Patterne  was  speared 
in  Ufiome  by  Masai  camp-followers  of  the  main  army, 
who  had  suffered  by  some  of  his  raids  in  the  past,  or 
who  transferred  to  the  "  Little  Terror  "  the  vendetta 
they  had  carried  on  with  his  ally,  the  Big  Terror  of  the 
Red  Crater,  In  any  case,  "  he  perished  miserably,"  as 
they  used  to  write  in  pre-Wells  histories.  He  never 
was  heard  of  again,  after  he  left  the  Happy  Valley. 
His  escort  of  Nyasaland  soldiers  quietly  rejoined  their 
regiment,  then  in  the  thick  of  fighting  at  Kondoa- 
Irangi ;  and  no  one  cared  enough  about  Sir  Willowby 
Patterne  to  put  any  questions.  His  Ruga-ruga  dis- 
persed as  plunderers  on  their  own  account,  till  they 
were  rounded  up  sharply  and  a  few  of  them  shot  for 
looting.  The  "  Little  Terror  "  ceased  all  at  once  to 
terrify,  and  the  baronetcy,  after  a  year's  delay  and 
presumption  of  death,  passed  to  a  distant  relative,  who 
was  the  reverend  headmaster  of  a  public  school. 

Roger,  meantime,  gradually  restored  the  Happy  Val- 
ley to  something  of  its  former  peace  and  .quietness. 
He  harboured  the  Catholic  missionaries  and  the  Ger- 
man women  and  children  there  till  provision  could  be 
made  for  their  withdrawal.  His  proceedings  were  ap- 
proved and  sanctioned  by  a  Boer  General  commanding 
a  wing  of  the  British  invading  army,  who  by  one  of 
those  coincidences  so  common  in  this  incredible  war, 
not  only  played  a  great  part  in  conquering  German 
East  Africa  for  the  Empire  he  himself  had  steadily 
fought  against  for  three  years,  but  turned  out  to  be  the 
very  identical  van  Rensselaer  who  had  picked  up  Roger 
as  a  prisoner  and  saved  his  life  in  1900. 

As  soon  as  the  Happy  Valley  was  brought  into  tele- 
graphic communication  with  the  coast  and  with  Eng- 


446      THE  MAN  WHO  DID  THE  RIGHT  THING 

land,  Roger  cabled  to  his  sister  his  whereabouts  and  his 
intentions  to  remain  in  the  Happy  Valley  till  its  politi- 
cal fate  was  decided.  In  return  he  learnt  of  the  death 
of  his  two  sons,  and  the  fact  that  his  two  daughters  had 
felt  impelled  to  marry  —  Maud  ("Fatima"),  Lord 
Silchester,  and  Sibyl  ("  Goosey  ")  a  wounded  officer  — 
without  waiting  to  hear  from  a  father  presumably  lost 
in  Central  Africa. 

So  Colonel  Roger  Brentham  at  the  end  of  the  war 
decided  that  the  England  of  the  Armistice  and  the 
Peace  and  the  Reconstruction  period  was  no  country 
for  him  to  live  in,  with  its  coal  strikes,  railway  strikes, 
engineer  strikes,  police  strikes,  taxi-drivers'  strikes, 
dockers'  strikes,  bakers'  strikes,  stage-hands'  strikes 
and  electricians'  strikes;  its  Irish  atrocities  and  re- 
prisals; its  futurist  art;  its  paper-strewn  highways  and 
byways  and  beauty-spots;  its  bottle-throwing  chars-a- 
bancs;  man-slaughtering  motors;  Albert  Hall  Victory 
Balls;  jazz  dances;  betting  scandals;  high  prices;  and 
low  standards  of  political  morality.  Preferable,  far, 
was  the  Happy  Valley,  where  relations  between  black, 
white,  and  brown  were  well  adjusted,  where  great 
wealth  was  being  quietly  produced  to  the  proportion- 
ate profit  of  all  concerned  in  the  production ;  where  pro- 
tection was  not  only  accorded  to  all  human  beings,  but 
also  to  all  beasts  and  birds  not  directly  harmful  to 
human  interests. 

So,  after  regularizing  his  position  with  the  Colonial 
Office  and  the  "  enemy "  shareholders,  he  asked  his 
sister  Maud  to  join  him,  and  replaced  the  Stotts  and 
Ann  Anderson  in  their  industrial  mission  stations. 

And  in  the  Happy  Valley  he  may  remain  another  ten 
years  yet,  till  he  becomes  a  walking  compendium  of 
information  on  the  past  and  present  of  East  Africa. 

When  he  is  72  and  Maud  is  74  —  a  wonder  as  re- 
gards resistance  to  African  germ  diseases  —  it  is  just 


ALL  ENDS  IN  THE  HAPPY  VALLEY     447 

possible  they  may  not  wish  to  leave  their  bones  in  an 
African  grave.  They  may  take  passages  in  an  Aerobus 
to  Hendon  and  thence  slip  down  to  Aldermaston  by 
motor  and  up  to  Farleigh;  and  after  glancing  round  at 
a  rejuvenated  England  and  a  pacified  Ireland,  after  ap- 
praising the  intelligence  and  beauty  of  Roger's  grand- 
children—  especially  the  son  and  heir  of  Lord  Silches- 
ter — may  finally  retire  in  some  season  of  abnormal 
cold  and  unconquerable  influenza  to  cedar-shaded  Al- 
dermaston churchyard,  where  the  vestiges  of  Lucy  and 
Sibyl  await  them. 


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